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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Crime of Henry Vane, by J. S. of
-Dale
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Crime of Henry Vane
-       A Study with a Moral
-
-Author: J. S. of Dale
-
-Release Date: January 14, 2022 [eBook #67164]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
-             at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-             generously made available by University of California
-             libraries)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME OF HENRY VANE ***
-
-
-  THE CRIME OF
-
-  HENRY VANE
-
-  A STUDY WITH A MORAL
-
-  BY J. S. OF DALE
-
-  _Author of "Guerndale"_
-
-  NEW YORK
-  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
-  1884
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT, 1884,
-
-  BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
-
-  Press of J. J. Little & Co.,
-
-  Nos. 10 to 20 Astor Place, New York.
-
-
-
-
-                                  THE
-                         CRIME OF HENRY VANE.
-
-
-"----Make a fool of yourself, like Vane."
-
-"I am not so sure that is fair to Vane," said John; "no one can go
-through what he did, and keep perfectly sound."
-
-"I'll leave it to the crowd," said the Major; "what say you, boys?"
-
-All were unanimous. There was no excuse for a crime like Vane's.
-Evidently they all knew Vane. He was damned without one dissenting
-voice.
-
-"Who was Vane?" said I, "and what did he do? Which commandment did he
-break? He must have made merry with them all--or, rather, have kept
-them all to get such a judgment in this club."
-
-A babel of voices arose. All these men were intimate friends; and they
-were sitting in one of the small smoking-rooms of the Columbian Club
-in New York. John had just engaged himself to be married, and we had
-given him a dinner; or, as Pel Schuyler put it, we were "recording his
-mortgage." Schuyler was a real-estate broker.
-
-"Now, look here," said John, "how many of you fellows know Vane
-personally?"
-
-No one, apparently. There was a moment's silence. Then the Major spoke
-up. "Bah!" said he, "I have heard the story these ten years." "So
-have I!" chimed in several others. "My brother knew Vane in Paris,"
-said Pel. "I had it from Mrs. Malgam herself," simpered Daisy Blake,
-fatuously.
-
-"Well, at least, I know nothing of it," I said; "tell it for my
-benefit, John."
-
-"Yes, yes," cried they, "let's hear the correct and only version
-according to John."
-
-It was that critical moment in a dinner, when the fireworks of
-champagne have sputtered out, and the burgundy invites to somnolence.
-All had lit their cigars, and felt more like listening than talking.
-John did not smoke.
-
-"I will," said he. "At that time, I was his best--I may say, his only
-friend."
-
-"And I say, still," said the Major, "he acted like a fool and
-criminally. There can be no excuse for such conduct."
-
-John shrugged his shoulders and began. Of course, I do not mean that
-he told the whole story just as I have written it. He related the
-bare facts, with little comment and without conversations. Whether
-you condemned the man or excused him, John thought, his story might
-be understood, even if his folly were not forgiven. The crowd at the
-club did neither; and, perhaps, their judgment is the judgment of the
-world; and the world is probably right. But we may learn from folly; it
-is sometimes more suggestive than common sense. There is the ordinary
-success and there is the exceptional failure; that is pleasanter, but
-this is more instructive. Extreme cases fix the law.
-
-The world is probably right; and, to those of us who are healthily
-adapted to our environment, the world is enough. Blessed are they who
-are fitted, for they shall survive. The world is enough; but the poet
-sang, love is enough. Shall we say, love is surplusage? The world is
-always right; and how virtuously the healthy world reproves what is
-morbid! How all the world unites in condemning him who is not fully
-content with itself! For such an one it cannot even spare its pity.
-There is a kind of personal animus in its contempt.
-
-Let us hasten to join our little voices to swell the universal song.
-So John told the story--plainly and coldly, the more adversely for
-the lingering doubt; so we tell the story, and the doubt lessens as
-we state the facts, and quite vanishes as we reach the end. It is the
-story of a common crime, and the criminal is no friend of ours, as he
-was of John's. Moreover, Schuyler called the criminal a fool.
-
-
-
-
-I.
-
-
-IN April, 1873, Henry Vane was sitting on the _perron_ of a small
-summer house in Brittany, poking the pebbles in the driveway with his
-cane. He had been there for half an hour, and there was nothing in his
-appearance and attitude to indicate that he would not be there for half
-an hour more. There was one red pebble, in particular, which he had an
-especial desire to prod out from among the others, which were gray.
-But it was round and slippery, and slid about the ferruled end of his
-cane. After poking it some time, he desisted and held the cane in his
-hands in front of his knees, which, as the next step of the porch was
-not much lower, were as high as his chin. "C'en est fait de moi," he
-muttered.
-
-Henry Vane, though a New Yorker, had been brought up in France, and in
-the French language his thoughts came most readily. He had just seen,
-for the last time, an old friend of his--a girl, whom he had known in
-infancy, in childhood, in maidenhood; and whom it seemed incredible,
-impossible, intolerable, that he should know no more. It was upon the
-piazza of her uncle's house that he was sitting; and she was to leave
-the next day for Switzerland.
-
-He was of age that day, and was "his own man now." "And hers," he
-thought, bitterly. She did not love him, however; and, at his request,
-had just told him so.
-
-"Décidément, c'en est fait de moi," he muttered again, and gave the
-pebble a vicious dig, which sent it flying into an acacia bush that
-stood in a green tub by the side of the driveway.
-
-He was twenty-one that day, and had come into his fortune. His fortune
-was not much--four thousand a year, left him by his grandmother and
-invested in government bonds. Still, twenty thousand francs made him
-distinctly a _rentier_; and twenty thousand francs seemed a good deal,
-shared with the girl he loved. But it seemed very little for him alone;
-genteel poverty in fact. He certainly could neither yacht nor race.
-Travelling--except _en étudiant_--was equally out of the question.
-
-Vane was a flippant young fellow, with a French education; fond of the
-world, of which, as he then thought, he knew much. Yet the _Figaro_ and
-the Bois de Boulogne and the _Palais-Royal_, or even the _Français_,
-did not seem to satisfy him, that day. And all for a little "Mees
-Anglaise!" How his friends would laugh at him! He was very young--they
-would say; very young for a _grande passion_. And then they would laugh
-again. But Vane felt sure that he should never get over it.
-
-What the deuce did fellows do in his position? He felt a wild desire
-for adventure and excitement; but excitement and adventure were
-expensive; unless there happened to be a war, and you went officially.
-But he had not many illusions of romance in war. He knew men who had
-been at Woerth and Gravelotte. Then there was travel. But this, also,
-was expensive. Old Prunier, the Professor, had made an expedition
-through Soudan the year before, and it had cost him eight hundred
-thousand francs. Moreover, you had to be up on rocks and beetles and
-things, to make your trip of any use to the world. And Vane had not yet
-given up all idea of being of use in the world. Besides, even Prunier's
-expedition had not ended in much, except a row with the Portuguese
-missionaries on the subject of the slave trade. These Christian slavers
-had met Prunier's remonstrances with the plausible argument that it was
-better for the negroes to be slaves in a Christian country, and save
-their souls, than free on earth and damned when they died. Prunier had
-consequently reported a crying need for a better article of missionary
-in Central Africa. But Vane could not go as a missionary. He felt that
-his confidence in Providence, at that moment, was not hardy enough to
-bear transplanting into the native South African mind, through the
-medium of a Turanian dialect.
-
-He might seek the land of his nativity, and make his four thousand a
-year, eight thousand. His father's business, for the moment, lay in
-Bellefontaine. He did not in the least know where Bellefontaine was,
-but the name had a civilized sound. And she was going to Switzerland.
-
-Vane must have clenched his hands at this point; for he felt a decided
-pricking in his left forefinger. And he observed several thorns on the
-stem of the rose she had given him. For she had given him a rose. That
-much favor had been shown him. He got into his mother's little phaeton
-and drove home--with his rose. So far, his investments in life had not
-been successful. The account with fortune might read somewhat like
-this--Debtor, an English girl: to ten years' love and an indefinite
-amount of devotion and sentiment. Creditor, by the English girl: one
-rose (with thorns). That is, if he had put the Dr. and Cr. sides right.
-He never could remember which was which. At all events, the returns
-on his investment were not large. And he, with his uncertainty about
-debtor and creditor, to think of competing with the practical Yankee
-of Bellefontaine! No; he would leave his four thousand a year where
-it was--a somewhat insignificant part of the national debt. Meantime,
-what would become of him? What should he do? He felt an idle outsider's
-curiosity to know what the deuce he _would_ do.
-
-Of one thing he felt certain, his orbit in life would be highly
-eccentric. He had no _raison d'être_; and it is difficult to predict
-the direction taken by a body without _raison d'être_. The curve
-of such a comet has no equation. He could no longer view life with
-gravity; and it is quite impossible to calculate the orbit of a body
-without gravity. He might bring up anywhere from Orion to the Great
-Bear. Only one thing was certain--he could not, for the present, bring
-up in Switzerland; and yet, oddly enough, that seemed to be the only
-part of any possible terrestrial orbit that had an attraction. But
-attraction decreases as the square of the distance. Assuming, for
-the sake of argument, that he was now two miles from her, and loved
-her with his whole heart; if he were twelve thousand miles away, he
-would love her only one divided by the square of six thousand--only
-one thirty-six-millionth part as much. In other words, he would have
-thirty-five million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred
-and ninety-nine thirty-six millionths of his heart left--left to bestow
-upon the dusky beauties of the Pacific. Damn the dusky beauties of the
-Pacific. He would see his sister Mary. After all, she was dearer to him
-than the dusky beauties of the Pacific could possibly be.
-
-When the boy arrived home, he drove to the stable, and alighting,
-threw the reins to a groom. He was perfectly sure that his life was
-broken; but a groom is a necessary adjunct of any life at all. He
-rolled a cigarette and strolled toward the house, still holding the
-rose, by the stem, between the first and second fingers of his left
-hand. Momentarily his thoughts had wandered from the English girl; he
-was still entirely busied in constructing a proper _dénouement_ for
-himself. The romance of his life, he felt, was gone; but he desired
-that his career should be consistent with his tragic part in life. She
-had left him enough self-esteem for that.
-
-So he entered the house.
-
-
-
-
-II.
-
-
-THE next few weeks seemed long enough to Vane; but, fortunately, we may
-make them short. They must be told; they were part of his life; how
-large a part, no one--possibly not even himself--ever knew.
-
-When Vane entered the main door, which François, the old butler, did
-not open for him as usual, he saw nothing of his mother. One or two
-of her shawls were lying, as if hastily thrown off, on the carved oak
-chair in the hall. The day was cool, and the embers of the morning
-fire were still red in the chimneyplace. The cigarette did not satisfy
-him; so he pulled out a cigar, and looking for a lighter, noticed a
-yellow envelope near him, back downward on the floor; close by it was
-a thin sheet of paper. Taking this, he was about to twist it up, when
-he saw that it was a telegram. He opened it and read his name, and the
-message, "_Mary is dead. Tell your mother for us. Pray, come directly.
-Gresham._"
-
-When the servants came in, they found him standing by the fireplace.
-"Yes," they said to him, "Madame had left for Dieppe that morning. She
-said nothing, but that Mr. Henry should follow her to England. François
-had accompanied her. Mr. Henry would have the carriage immediately. But
-surely Mr. Henry would dine before departing."
-
-No; he would go directly. Thomas must pack his portmanteau. "And,
-Thomas, lay out a black suit--all in black, you understand?" He would
-take a glass of wine and a biscuit. "And, Thomas, all letters for any
-one were to be forwarded to him at Sir Thomas Gresham's, The Eyotts,
-Rushey, Lincolnshire. Stop; he would write the address on a card." So
-he caught the evening mail from Rennes, and the night tidal steamer
-from Dieppe. And the gray English fog at sunrise the next morning found
-him off Newhaven, still pacing the deck.
-
-Into the cloud of London at nine; out at ten, and flying through Essex
-cornfields and Cambridgeshire fens. There had been heavy rains the
-night before, and the country was soggy and saturated, with white
-gleams of water over the land. The hay was swashing in the fields like
-seaweed. Then the great church of Ely broke the horizon, and he changed
-the train, finding an hour to wait. The little town was deserted; the
-great towers seemed to weigh it down, to compel a solemn stillness. He
-passed his time in the cathedral. At the end of the nave, just in front
-of the eastern windows, is a beautiful reredos, a marvellous assemblage
-of angels, saints and pinnacles. There is a central figure of Christ
-among the apostles which had a strange attraction for him. He must have
-been quite rapt in this; for the din of the noon-day bells reminded him
-that his train left at twelve-fourteen.
-
-At Rushey Station the carriage met him from the Eyotts, with Sir
-Henry's footmen in mourning. The Greshams were all very fond of Mary.
-He saw his mother as soon as he got to the house; but nothing was said
-between them for a long time. "Mary is to be buried here," she began,
-finally. "I think it better; better than any place out of America."
-Then, after a pause: "I have not dared to telegraph your father. I
-could not bear to have him know, all alone. He has not been well
-lately, I know; and is anxious about his business. I wrote him that
-Mary was ill, and begged him to come to France."
-
-The Greshams were very kind, and all was done that could be done. Clara
-Gresham seemed overcome with grief; she had loved Mary so dearly, and
-her visit was to have been such a happy one. She was a quiet, rather
-plain girl, but Vane found he could talk more easily with her than
-with any one else. His mother and he said very little when they were
-together.
-
-One morning, at the breakfast table, Vane got a letter from America.
-Some presentiment made him conceal it from his mother, and not open
-it until he was alone. It was written in a tremulous hand, unlike
-his father's, and told him they had lost everything. His father's
-property, though large, was all involved in railways; and some panic
-had intervened at a critical moment and all had been swept away. "My
-poor boy," the letter went on, "even your own little fortune is gone.
-Will you forgive me? You can bear it, I know, for you are young, and
-can make your own way; and your mother has loved me long enough to live
-with me these few last years in poverty; but when I think of Mary's
-future, so different from what I had hoped, it breaks my heart. You
-must give up the lease of Monrepos and come to America directly."
-
-His mother divined bad news, immediately, and followed him, when he
-left the room; but she seemed almost happy to hear it was only their
-fortune they had lost, and not her husband. Her one idea was to
-get back to him in America; but, to do that they must first return
-to France. Their departure from the Greshams was hasty, and in the
-afternoon they were on their way to Brittany. His mother seemed very
-much broken; and he even feared for her mind at times. It was necessary
-to interrupt the journey at London and Dover; and it was with a feeling
-of relief that he found himself finally within the gates of home.
-
-But Vane's life was to begin with a crushing succession of sorrows.
-Mrs. Vane was impatient and nervous; and went hastily into the house
-while he turned to give some directions about the luggage. As he
-stood talking to the coachman, he heard a faint cry in the hall. He
-went quickly in, and found his mother fainting, another fatal yellow
-envelope beside her. It was a telegram from one of his father's friends
-in New York, announcing his sudden death in that city.
-
-It was with great difficulty that Mrs. Vane was brought back to
-consciousness at all; and when she revived, she was delirious. Vane
-knew nothing whatever about illness; but he carried her up-stairs
-himself and then drove to Rennes for another doctor, leaving the local
-practitioners in charge. It seemed so strange to be all alone, to have
-charge of the family affairs, to have no one to consult with or rely
-upon. But Mary, too, was dead.
-
-So he drove into Rennes and brought a respectable old doctor, who
-talked gracefully about nothings, and looked at him curiously and not
-unkindly over his spectacles. He heard in a few words the story of his
-mother's illness, but seemed more interested in Vane himself. "Ce beau
-jeune homme," he said, tapping him playfully on the arm; "il ne faut
-pas gâter tout ça!" The young man somewhat impatiently shook him off
-and assured him that he was well. Arriving at the château, Dr. Kérouec
-went at once to the sick-room, but stayed there barely five minutes.
-
-Yes, one could save her life; he had seen that directly. But, for the
-rest, he must get her at once to some place of security where she might
-have treatment--it was her only chance. But Vane said No to this; not
-until they were sure.
-
-The next day she had recovered her strength, but was violently insane.
-They lived in the château a month and there was no change. Then the
-servants talked of going, and letters came from America telling Vane
-how complete his father's ruin had been. He had been buried by his
-friends in New York, as Vane had directed by telegraph. Vane could no
-longer keep the château or even pay the household expenses. He must go
-to America to see what he could save of his father's estate.
-
-At the end of the month several physicians, most skilled in mental
-disorders, had a consultation on his mother's case. The decision was
-unanimous--she was incurable. Could she live? Yes, with proper care,
-for years. Dr. Kérouec had a personal friend who made a specialty of
-these cases and took charge of only two or three patients at a time.
-Was this her only chance of getting well? Yes: if no chance could be
-called a chance. It was not an ordinary _maison de santé_, and here she
-would have the best of treatment, but it was expensive--fifteen hundred
-francs a month. Could she bear the journey to America? Never. Vane
-thanked the doctors and dismissed them all, except Dr. Kérouec.
-
-That night, for many hours, the young man paced the courtyard under his
-mother's window. At ten in the morning he asked to see the doctor and
-found him breakfasting.
-
-"I have decided," he said briefly. Dr. Kérouec extended his hand: "Ce
-brave jeune homme!" The next evening his mother was safely installed
-in the pretty little house near Rennes, where already Dr. Kérouec and
-his friend had privately made preparations. "And, my boy," said Dr.
-Kérouec (who was rich and knew all the circumstances by this time),
-"it is customary to pay in advance only when my friend does not know
-_ses gens_. I have told him that you will pay at the end of the year."
-Vane's voice faltered as he thanked the doctor, but he produced a bank
-note for five thousand francs and insisted upon leaving it then.
-
-That night Dr. Kérouec saw Vane safely on board the St. Malo packet.
-"I will care for her, my son," he said, with a parting pressure of the
-hand. "Ce brave jeune homme," he muttered, as he walked ashore and up
-the little Norman street, mopping his bald head (for it was a hot June
-evening) with a large red silk handkerchief.
-
-
-
-
-III.
-
-
-VANE had six hundred francs left; and, taking the Holyhead mail, the
-next evening he was on board the City of Richmond at Queenstown as
-a steerage passenger. He had been troubled with no further thoughts
-of adventure in the Soudan; and was quite indifferent as to his
-own _dénouement_. He spent a great deal of the time at sea walking
-on the deck; as a steerage passenger he was allowed to walk aft as
-far as the foremast. The other steerage passengers looked upon him
-as an intellectual young gentleman; probably a scholar in reduced
-circumstances.
-
-Eighteen thousand francs a year, Vane was thinking; this, at least, he
-must have, for his mother could not be sent elsewhere. Gold was then
-at a premium, and this sum meant four thousand a year in America. Just
-the insignificant fortune he had lost; but could his labor be worth
-so much? This problem had filled his mind, and kept his temper sane.
-One who has to earn his bread has little time to sigh for things less
-possible of attainment. The natural animal motive atones for any want
-of others; no one is a pessimist who has to work for his living. The
-young man smiled a little at the thought that he, too, was going to
-America to seek his fortune--not to improve his future, but to amend
-what remained of the past. This one obvious, clear duty was before him
-then. Afterwards, he might see what the world had left for him.
-
-One day about sunset he was sitting on the deck, reading a favorite
-book of his--an old Florentine edition of Petrarca. As he turned the
-leaves, a broken rose fell from them. It was a book which they--the
-English girl and he--had often read together; and, having no Bible
-(for, like all Frenchmen and many young men, he was rather a skeptic
-in matters of religion), he had thrown her rose hastily between the
-leaves. He was surprised a little, now, at his own want of sentiment.
-But those times already seemed so far off! He looked at the flower
-a moment; then picked it up, and dropped it in the sea. The leaves
-scattered as it fell, and were soon lost in the broad wake of the
-steamer.
-
-Vane landed in New York among five hundred other steerage passengers.
-Of course the papers did not take the trouble to report the coming
-of so insignificant a person; nor did he call upon any of his social
-acquaintances. His first visit was to his father's grave; then he went
-to see, at their down-town offices, such of his father's business
-friends and correspondents as he knew by name. He had written Mr.
-Peyton--the one from whom the news had come--to suspend all decisive
-steps until he came. Mr. Peyton--as indeed were all who had known his
-father--was very kind; and told him the first thing to do was to get
-appointed administrator of his father's estate. This being done, he
-called a meeting of his father's creditors. Mr. Peyton had advised him
-to offer a settlement of sixty cents on the dollar; but he did not
-accept this suggestion. He told the creditors of Mr. Peyton's advice,
-and added that he could probably pay at least seventy cents. But, he
-continued, his desire was to pay in full. His only hope of so doing was
-to be allowed to hold his father's investments for a time, manage them
-judiciously, and avoid forced sales. Would they give him three years?
-
-They were few in number, all capitalists, and co-operators with his
-father; and they were pleased with something in the young man's manner.
-All except one could easily spare the money; and to him Vane, with
-the consent of the other creditors, gave his dividend of seventy per
-cent., and received his acquittances in full. And that night the other
-creditors, at a directors' dinner, agreed that, while they had done a
-very foolish thing, they were anxious to see what young Vane would make
-of it.
-
-Young Vane took two small rooms in the oldest house of a down-town
-street, for which he paid two dollars a week. And that autumn, Vane,
-who a few months before had barely admitted that the name Bellefontaine
-had a civilized sound, might have been seen riding on the cow-catcher
-of a locomotive in Northern Wisconsin, and estimating the probable
-earnings from freight when the forests about him were cut. When he
-got his father's affairs into such shape that they could be managed
-from New York, he procured a clerkship in a banking-house in that
-city at six hundred dollars salary. And then for a year, his life was
-monotonous routine without a day's rest. He rose at seven, prepared his
-own breakfast of bread and fruit, and was at the bank before nine. He
-lunched on a sandwich; left the bank at five, and walked to the Park
-and back. At seven he dined on a steak and a pint of ale. And such
-of his evenings as were not occupied with the care of his father's
-estate, this practical young man of business gave, not to newspapers
-and stock reports, but to mediæval history and Italian poetry. It
-was his safety valve. He sometimes thought of writing a book on the
-social and political history of the Florentine republic. He steadily
-refused all invitations of his capitalist friends to dinner or other
-entertainments. He could now live with two suits of clothes, and, to
-accept their invitations, he would need three; moreover, he secretly
-feared that he could not bear his present mode of life if he had even
-a glimpse of any other. Only while alone could he forget that he was
-alone in the world. John, who was in the same banking-house, was the
-only man he knew; and many an evening John left a dinner, or was late
-at a party, that he might sit for an hour in the little back room in
-Washington Place.
-
-At the end of the first year Vane took a week's vacation, walking in
-the Catskills. Every week he had a letter from Rennes; and frequently
-one from Dr. Kérouec, telling him of no change in his mother's
-condition. When he returned from his vacation, he was called into the
-counting-room of the senior partner, and given a check for four hundred
-dollars in addition to his first year's salary of six hundred; and,
-moreover, was promoted to a position of three thousand a year salary.
-That first year, Vane had spent three hundred and eighty dollars in
-board and lodging, and eighty more in pocket money. He had bought no
-clothing, having brought all he needed from France. His travelling
-expenses had been large, but these he had charged to the account of his
-father's estate. This left him five hundred and forty dollars to the
-good.
-
-Vane then went to Mr. Peyton and borrowed three thousand dollars on
-his own security. This three thousand he sent to Dr. Kérouec; and five
-hundred dollars of his earnings he invested in a life-assurance policy
-payable to Dr. Kérouec as trustee for his mother. He thus had forty
-dollars in his pocket at the beginning of his second year.
-
-By this time some of his father's railways were beginning to get out of
-shallow water. Vane watched them carefully; and by judicious management
-and successful sales, he was able, on the first of August, eighteen
-hundred and seventy-six, the end of the three years allowed him, to
-pay his father's creditors their claims in full--four hundred and
-forty-seven thousand dollars, with interest for three years at six per
-cent. And over and above this, after paying Mr. Peyton, he had sixteen
-thousand dollars, which he might call his own. Early in August he
-sailed for Brittany, and spent a week with Dr. Kérouec at Rennes.
-
-His mother's hair was now white; she was quiet, but still hopelessly
-insane, nor did she even recognize him.
-
-Vane was back again on the first of September. When he presented
-himself at the bank, he was offered a responsible position, and a
-salary of six thousand dollars a year, with a hint of partnership in
-the near future. He now removed to lodgings in Eighteenth Street; and
-on going home that night, for the first time in two years he burst into
-a fit of crying. This turn of hysterics was the prelude to a low fever,
-of which he lay five weeks ill.
-
-
-
-
-IV.
-
-
-JOHN HAVILAND was with him a great deal of this time, and, on his
-recovery, took him severely to task for the life he had been leading.
-For three years he had been a mere machine--a blind, passionless,
-purposeful energy. A man, and a young man, could not live like that.
-What pleasure had he taken in all that time? And a young man, unless
-he has attained happiness, cannot live entirely without pleasure, even
-if it be true that he should not seek for it. And Haviland knew enough
-of Vane's life to feel assured that there had not hitherto been much
-happiness. Moreover, Vane was a man of the world, and had been out of
-it for three years. It was unnatural. He should see something of the
-people of his own country. His mother was well; and would probably be
-the same for years. And he had been nearly three years in mourning.
-"Now," John concluded, "I wish you to come to a dinner at our house on
-Friday."
-
-Vane smiled, and looked at his threadbare black suit--one of the
-original black suits--which had seen much service since he brought it
-over from France. But he pleasantly accepted John's invitation, and
-forthwith visited his tailor. That afternoon, in the park, as he turned
-to come home from his walk, and saw the walls and spires of his own
-city harshly outlined before the sunset, he realized for the first time
-that he was a stranger in a strange land. For the first time, as he
-walked down Fifth Avenue, between the level, high wall of house fronts,
-with their regular squares of lighted windows, he caught himself
-wondering what was behind these windows. Now and then he saw a feminine
-silhouette on the white window-shades; in some houses, even, he could
-see into a lower room; there were usually pictures on the walls and
-often books, or bindings, on the shelves; there was frequently an old
-gentleman by the fireside, and always a young girl or two. It was
-piquant to catch these glimpses of the domestic hearth from the street;
-he remembered how impossible such visions were in the Faubourg, among
-the old hotels between court and garden.
-
-As he thought of the newly discovered country he was soon to enter,
-so strange to him, he felt that he, also, was strange to himself.
-He tried to bring back his old nature of the boulevards, Longchamp
-and Trouville; but it seemed to him childish and obsolete; showy and
-senseless, like a pasteboard suit of stage armor. He did not regret
-it. He was a man and an American; men were earnest, life in America
-was earnest. He knew little of his own city; but he had read the
-current novels; and he thought that he had seen enough to know that
-the every-day life in America was tangible, material, and the life
-of society what it should be, a gay leisure, a surface of pleasure
-and rest. Now, in Paris it was the every-day life that was trivial;
-the theatres were filled with vaudevilles; but the tragedies were
-everywhere, off the stage. It was well, the young man felt, that he was
-an American; his life had begun too sternly for a more artificial state
-of society; he lacked more than other people, and he demanded more from
-the world.
-
-So the Friday night in question found him arrayed in the normal evening
-costume of modern times. It wore somewhat awkwardly and strangely at
-first; and one or two little minutiæ of dress he did not know at all;
-as, whether gentlemen in America would wear gold studs, and how they
-tied their cravats. A waiter met him in the hall holding a plate, on
-which were several little envelopes, one of which bore his name. I
-suppose, thought he, in a country where there is no precedence, but
-much formality, this indicates whom we are to take in to dinner. He
-opened his envelope and found within a card, and written in a feminine
-hand _Miss Baby Thomas_. What an intolerable name!
-
-Coming above into the reception room, his first impressions were
-decidedly favorable. John's mother was a comely woman of that
-comfortable domestic sort known as motherly; she raised one's opinion
-of human nature even by the way in which she sat down. The prevailing
-tone seemed refined, Vane thought. No more bad taste was visible than
-is unavoidable in a country where the head of a family dies in a
-finer house than the one he was born in. The women were charming in
-dress, and face and figure; but their voices were disagreeable, and
-they seemed to him a little brusque. In fact, the men, though rather
-awkward, seemed to have more social importance, if not better breeding.
-
-So far had he progressed in his studies, when a voice over his shoulder
-said, "Miss Thomas--Mr. Vane." Inferring that he was being presented,
-he turned quickly about, bowing as he did so. The young lady did not
-wait for him to begin, but at once rattled off a number of questions
-about himself and his foreign life. As the most of these she answered
-herself with an "I suppose," or a "but of course," Vane had leisure
-to observe her while she talked. She was pretty; admirably, sweetly
-pretty; there was no doubt of that; as pretty as masses of dead-black
-hair and eyes of intense gentian blue could make her. She had a lovely
-neck and hands; and a smile which seemed placed there with a divine
-foreknowledge of kisses. It was at once infantine, arch and gentle;
-and then there was a pretty little toss of the head and a shrug of
-the white, young shoulders. Vane looked at her curiously, a little
-condescendingly perhaps, as the first specimen of the natives he had
-seen. She did not seem to mind his looking at her. If a French girl
-had so calmly borne his glance, there would have been a little of the
-coquette in hers. But, after all, thought Vane,--this was charming;
-more ideal, more intelligent, sweeter than Paris--but it was not unlike
-Paris. The dress was certainly Parisian. She was better dressed than
-young ladies are in Paris. Her people must be very rich. Yet, he was
-disappointed. She was not American enough. She would have been quite in
-his mood of five years gone by. She was not like English girls; and he
-had hoped American girls were like them.
-
-Vane had just finished this process of mentally ticketing her off, when
-she grew silent. The first quick rush of her conversation was gone.
-She seemed to be getting her breath and waiting for him. He did not
-quite know how to begin. This young lady reminded him of a glass of
-champagne. When you first pour it out, there is a froth and sparkle;
-then a stillness comes; if you wish a fresh volume of sparkles, you
-must drop something into it. A piece of sugar is best. Vane's French
-breeding stood him in good stead: he began with a compliment.
-
-After the dinner, the nine ladies disappeared from the room; and the
-nine men grouped themselves at one end of the table and smoked cigars
-over the sweetmeats. When the room was well filled with tobacco-smoke,
-they threw open the doors, and returned to the drawing-room. The ladies
-were grouped about, picturesquely, drinking tea; and the air was
-delicate with their presence. As the body of men moved in, it seemed a
-little like an incursion of the Huns into Italy.
-
-The party kept together but a few moments more. Most of the men were
-sleepy; little was said by the women. It was as if there were nothing
-to talk about, or as if the men had eaten too much; but they had eaten
-very little. Vane was relieved when they got out of doors.
-
-John walked back to his lodgings with him. The two young men found no
-lack of things to talk about. Haviland took still another cigar. "What
-did you think of the dinner?" said he finally. "I mean, the people?"
-
-"I thought it was very pleasant," said Vane, eluding the second form of
-the question. But Haviland recurred to it.
-
-"I mean the people. Miss Thomas, for instance."
-
-"Miss Thomas, for instance," said the stranger. "I think," he
-continued, recalling to mind his mental label, "she is sweet-tempered,
-innocent, ambitious, and shallow." Vane had formerly prided himself on
-some acquaintance with women of the world.
-
-John laughed. "Perhaps you are right," he said. "But she will amuse
-you, and wake you up." It seemed as if he were remembering something;
-then he laughed again. "You do not do her justice yet. She is one of
-the most entertaining and, in an innocent little way, exciting girls I
-know. I put her next you for that purpose."
-
-"Who is her father?"
-
-"Oh, a stockbroker down-town. No one in particular. The family would
-not interest you."
-
-"None of the mammas were here to-night?"
-
-"Dear me, no," answered John. "Why do you ask?"
-
-"I should like to see some of them; that is all."
-
-
-
-
-V.
-
-
-AT this time Vane was not in the habit of thinking about women. He had
-found life particularly serious, and girls were not serious. Somewhat
-fatuously, perhaps, he fancied no woman under thirty could either
-understand him, or arouse his own interest. And most of the women over
-thirty were married. He understood that in America any intimacy with
-married women was out of the question; married women were quite given
-up to domestic duties, and kept out of society.
-
-But Vane had certain theories of his own as to social observances,
-and he thought it his duty, after taking Miss Thomas in to dinner,
-to call upon her. He performed this duty (which afterwards became a
-pleasure) upon the following afternoon. He found her in a somewhat
-dingy house on East Fifteenth Street, but, though the setting was dull
-and commonplace, herself was even prettier than he remembered her, and
-simply and charmingly dressed. Vane was no amateur of bric-à-brac; he
-had no auctioneer's eye, and, if a room was in perfect taste, did not
-commonly notice it at all; but glaring faults would force themselves
-upon him, and he could not help observing that, with the exception of
-the daughter's dress, the household showed no evidence of knowledge of
-what is good in literature, art, or taste.
-
-Except Miss Thomas. Always except Miss Thomas herself. She received
-him with much grace of manner, but seemed to have very little to say.
-Vane found that he had to talk largely against time; and this rather
-disappointed him at first. At first, but afterwards he decided that
-he liked this still mood best. There was no dimple and sparkle, but
-it was quiet and companionable. She is not like "a young lady," Vane
-thought; still less like a French young lady. She is neither _ingénue_
-nor _formée_; she is young, bright, a good fellow. One might play Paul
-to her Francesca without a _dénouement_. How could he have thought her
-ill-trained? Though she had evidently thought little, read less, and
-been taught nothing at all, she had a sweet natural elegance of her
-own. Vane found time to observe all this between his sentences. They
-were not very well connected.
-
-Was he going to Mrs. Roster's ball? she had asked.--No, he thought not.
-He did not know her.--He had better go. Every one would be there.
-
-"Then I fear I am no one," said Vane. "I am not even invited." He was
-sorry to fancy that her interest in him flagged a little after this.
-She had met him at a good house, but, after all, he might be a mere
-protégé of John Haviland's. Mr. Haviland was always picking up queer
-people. A moment after this Vane took his leave.
-
-Why should he not go to Mrs. Roster's? he said to himself. He could
-not always be brooding on the addled eggs of the past. After all, the
-world was all that was left him, and in the world the dance still went
-on merrily, and maidens' eyes were bright; leaves still were green, and
-the foam of the sea as white as ever, and wine still sparkled in the
-glass. He said this to himself with a somewhat sceptical grin, for,
-like most Frenchmen with whom he had lived, he took little pleasure in
-drinking. A Frenchman drinks to go to the devil: he rarely goes to the
-devil because he drinks. Yet he was, or at all events he had been, fond
-of society. He had liked light and gay faces, and bright conversation,
-and heartlessness--if there must be heartlessness--masked under suave
-manners and intellectual sympathy. Out of society the heartlessness
-was just as real, he had used to think, only ruder; there is at least
-as much snobbishness, and it is more offensively vulgar. He could not
-stay always out from all society. He must find something to pull him
-back into the world; he must get some grip of life. Hitherto his only
-foothold had been his clear necessity of making eighteen thousand
-francs a year to send to his mother.
-
-He could probably have persuaded himself with much less reasoning if
-he had not had a secret inclination to go; but, as it was, he reasoned
-himself into it, and thought that he thought it was a bore. So he went
-to Mrs. Roster's ball. Of course he admired the beauty of American
-women; the beauty of American women is like the Hudson River; one
-is bound to prefer it to the Rhine. He thought the party was very
-pretty and the dancing beautifully done, and, moreover, he made the
-acquaintance of several young ladies of quite a different type than
-Miss Thomas's. They had plenty of breeding and intelligence, and talked
-the latest slang of culture to perfection, and were evidently of the
-great world, if they had not quite so much charm as she. Still none of
-these, as yet, were essentially American, or even very deeply English,
-though they dabbled in it.
-
-Miss Thomas herself, for some reason unknown to Vane, did not receive
-quite so much attention as he had fancied that she would. It was not
-her fault, for she was charmingly dressed and never looked prettier.
-
-As he was ready to leave he met her, for the first time, coming down
-the stairs in wraps and wanting her carriage.
-
-"You have not spoken to me the whole evening," said she softly, as she
-took his arm.
-
-"I was afraid to, mademoiselle," said Vane, half jocosely.
-
-"Come to-morrow," she whispered seriously. "It is my day for receiving,
-and I shall be so glad to see you." Vane bowed his thanks, and the next
-moments were occupied in conveying herself and skirts safely into the
-coupé. As he was about to shut the door she extended her hand frankly:
-"You will come, won't you?" Vane was a little puzzled; he took her hand
-awkwardly, and muttered something about being only too delighted. He
-had no experience whatever of American women, much less American girls.
-Why should she so particularly wish to see him? He called the next
-day, expecting to learn, but in that he was doomed to disappointment.
-Apparently Miss Thomas, if she had any reason, had forgotten it;
-she had very little to say, and the call was quite conventional and
-commonplace. "Bah!" he thought, as he walked home. "Here I have wasted
-half an afternoon over this girl simply because she asked me. Doubtless
-she herself had nothing better to do than waste it over me." And
-perhaps he added secretly that his life was something more serious than
-hers, and, at all events, he had no mind for light flirtation.
-
-
-
-
-VI.
-
-
-NEVERTHELESS, some curious chance made him see a good deal of Miss
-Thomas. He was very apt to sit next her at dinner, even if he did not
-take her in. And whatever she might be, she certainly was not silly.
-She said very little, it is true; but it occurred to Vane one day that
-what she did say never placed her in a false or foolish position. Nor
-had he ever made a remark which she did not fully understand, in its
-full bearing and implication. Sometimes she affected--particularly if
-its nature was complimentary--to be wholly unconscious of its meaning;
-sometimes she would even ask an explanation. But a moment after, she
-was very apt to say or do some little thing which showed that she had
-understood it perfectly. Vane, who, in his flippant moods, was rather
-an adept at conversational fencing, and had flattered himself that very
-careful ground was quite unnecessary with Miss Thomas, gradually put
-more attention into his guard and more care in his attack. And when he
-saw, to continue his own metaphor, that his simple thrusts in quarte
-and tierce were easily parried and sometimes returned, he began to
-honor his adversary with a more elaborate attack. But, as he one day
-acknowledged to himself, though she had rarely touched him, yet he was
-not sure that he had ever got fairly under her own guard. Altogether,
-the more he saw of Miss Thomas, the more she interested him; and after
-the serious struggles of the day, he quite enjoyed his little playful
-evening encounters with so charming a feminine adversary. For he began
-to admit to himself that she was charming--there was no doubt of that.
-And meantime (so he fancied) the intercourse with her happy, simple
-nature was having a beneficial influence on his own.
-
-For the past three years his attitude had been one of stern courage,
-of self-renunciation. But, after all, why should even he be always
-shut out from the spring? Flowers still bloomed in the world, summer
-followed winter, and this pretty little butterfly that fluttered near
-him might, after all, bring him healthier thoughts from her own air
-than he found in his morbid life. What a sharp inquisitor is one's own
-self! What a cross-examiner of hidden motive! And what a still sharper
-witness is that self under inquisition! Vane never took his young
-friend seriously; and felt a need of excusing himself for trifling, as
-he thought.
-
-John suddenly asked him, one day, what he thought of Miss Thomas now,
-and whether he had changed his views at all. "I was very much struck
-with your first diagnosis," he said. "At a moment's study, you gave the
-popular opinion of her; that she was gay, shallow, good-humored, and
-ambitious--and you might have added clever, rather than innocent."
-
-Vane was a little displeased.
-
-"I think that I and the world were wrong," said he. "She is not
-shallow, but she is humble rather than vain; as for ambition, she is
-perhaps too much without it; and I should not be surprised if somewhere
-about her pretty little self she had a true woman's heart, which she is
-not yet conscious of."
-
-John laughed. "Look out, old man," said he; "only a poet is allowed to
-fall in love with his own creation. Never say I have not given you fair
-warning. Ten Eyck was very attentive to her at one time; and the world
-believed that she wanted to marry him. But he was appointed _chargé
-d'affaires_ at London; and left her without bringing matters to an
-issue. Since then, when he has been back in New York once or twice, he
-has entirely dropped her."
-
-"And do you mean to say that she still cares for him after that?"
-
-"So the world thinks; and the world is apt to be right in such matters."
-
-"Bah!" said Vane. "No woman could care for a man who had once led her
-to believe he loved her, and left her."
-
-"Humph!" answered John. "That may be true of woman in the abstract; but
-I am not sure of its truth in this longitude. It is easier to judge
-woman in general than a New York girl in particular."
-
-"At all events," said Vane, "I give her full leave to try her skill on
-me, skilful as you say she is. Indeed, if you think she is fair game
-for what you call a flirtation, you have removed my only scruples."
-
-"Very well, old boy--go in. But Miss Thomas once told another girl that
-she could understand any man in two days' acquaintance. Don't go in too
-deep."
-
-"Nonsense!" thought Vane when John had left. "I flatter myself I am
-beyond her hurting. It is pleasant enough to have her as a friend. I
-wish I could wish to marry her." And he called to his mind Brittany and
-that last rose. "But I am sorry if she really can still care for that
-man. Ten Eyck was his name? I should be sorry to like her less. How
-strange these American women are! Now, in France--Bah!" he broke off,
-"it can't be true; and, after all, what do I care if it is?"
-
-Vane liked her very much, and thought her very much underrated by the
-world; and the same afternoon, by way of vindication, he went to her
-house and made a long call, _tête-à-tête_. He had fallen into an easy
-companionship with her, which made her society a delightful rest and
-respite from the earnest stress and strain of his life, of any man's
-life. They were beginning to have numerous little confidences as to
-people and things; views shared by them only, which gave them little
-private topics of conversation, nooks of thought, where they met. Thus
-Vane could quite shut out a third party from the conversation, and keep
-Miss Thomas to himself. Her cultivation and taste surprised him more
-and more as he knew her. This pretty little New York girl, naturally
-half-spoiled and petted, brought up in a particularly _bourgeois_
-household, never having been out of it and New York, had yet a range
-of mind and appreciation quite equal to anything he could bring her
-in books or in conversation. The people about her seemed totally
-different--different in views, in taste, in appearance, in manner. Yet
-she never seemed discontented at home--a common fault of children in
-a country where they improve upon their parents. She moved among them
-modestly and lovingly, like a princess unconscious of her royalty. All
-this thought Vane, and marvelled.
-
-He found that even his peculiar tastes were shared. It has been
-mentioned that this successful young business man had a secret taste
-for Italian poetry. This he had been used to indulge alone; but on his
-mentioning it, she spoke with enthusiasm of the sweet old mediæval
-_terza rima_. Having little opinion of women's power of purely ideal
-enjoyment, he had at first doubted the sincerity of this taste. Still,
-he brought around some old verses one day; and soon it became his
-habit, instead of reading alone, to pass an evening or two in a week
-reading with her. And so during the winter, with double the pleasure he
-had ever known before, they went through the familiar pages of Ariosto,
-Tasso and Dante. The fifth canto of the Inferno remained, however, her
-favorite; and with the light of her eyes upon the text Vane made a much
-better translation than Byron or Cary ever dreamed. She was never tired
-of hearing the passage beginning "Siede la terra dove nata fui." And
-much practice in translation makes perfect.
-
-Thus, thanks to Miss Thomas and a little sight of the lighter rim of
-life, Vane passed a winter which, if not happy, was at least less
-bitter than he had known for years. In the natural course of events,
-society pronounced him attentive to Miss Thomas; but Vane cared little
-for that. His character was not of the mould which cares what the world
-says. He did not believe that her life was very happy, either; and he
-thought they were both the better for their friendship. The more he saw
-of her, the less he doubted that she had at one time cared for some
-one, Ten Eyck or another; though, of course, for him she would never
-care again. After all, she was his superior; she had kept her sweet
-self above her sorrow, he had not. How he had misinterpreted her that
-first evening! Now he saw she was a woman, in all the glory of her
-womanhood, strong, gentle, and true.
-
-Vane went back to Brittany in the June of the summer following. One of
-his last calls was upon Miss Thomas, and she chided him with not making
-it the very last. However, the call lasted three hours. Twenty times
-Vane rose to go, and each time was detained by some pretext or another
-of Miss Thomas. There is a sweet pleading manner of urging a wish,
-even a selfish one, that makes you feel as if you were doing yourself
-a favor in gratifying it. Miss Thomas had this manner, which few men,
-particularly strong men, can resist. Vane always yielded. He would as
-soon have thought of putting a pet canary through the manual of arms
-as of resisting it. In this way Vane's visit was prolonged, and when
-he went home he admitted to himself that it had been a very charming
-one. He thought she was a lovely woman, and wished some nice fellow
-would marry her. What a gentle, sunny nature she had! And what a lovely
-type of the best American women, so different both from the French
-and English, so natural, so pure, and yet so bright and charming. "At
-least," thought Vane, "if I ever go back to France to live I shall
-have seen some things wholly worthy of admiration in my own country."
-He was sorry if she really cared (as she had seemed to) that he had
-called upon her two days before his departure. She had been very kind
-to him that winter, and it certainly would have been more _empressé_ to
-have called upon her last. Vane stopped on his way to Jersey City the
-morning of the steamer's sailing, and procured a superb mass of roses.
-These he sent to Miss Thomas with his card: "From her sincere friend."
-It was the last thing he did in America.
-
-
-
-
-VII.
-
-
-VANE stayed with old Dr. Kérouec in Rennes, and found the good
-physician kinder than ever. He always called Vane "my son" now, and
-he had to submit to numerous embraces, a proceeding he did not like,
-for in his manners Vane had that clumsiness in expressing anything
-emotional, that Gothic phlegm, about which Saxons grow vainglorious,
-and for which Celts detest them.
-
-Every day Vane walked in the garden with his mother--a painful duty,
-for she never remembered him. Her dementia was quite harmless now, and
-she sometimes spoke to Vane of himself, not knowing him, but never
-mentioned his father. Curiously enough her talk was much of Mary, and
-of the English girl who had been the object of his boyish affections.
-Vane heard casually of her marriage that summer, and was more surprised
-than pleased to find how little the news affected him.
-
-Once in a while, however, he caught himself wondering what Miss Thomas
-was doing; and a week after his arrival he received a note from her to
-thank him for the flowers he had sent. She also said that they were at
-some place in Pennsylvania for the summer, far from the madding crowd,
-but she found the place very stupid and the people inane. There was
-nothing to do there. The men were all young Philadelphians, she wrote,
-and generally uninteresting. Vane was glad to get the note, and of
-course never thought of replying.
-
-At this time Vane was a handsome, erect fellow, with a large aquiline
-nose, and heavy eyebrows shading quiet eyes. Most of the people knew
-him well as the doctor's protégé. One day the good old doctor came to
-him with an air of much mysterious importance. He passed Vane's arm
-through his, and led him to his favorite walk up and down the garden.
-"My son," he began, tapping him on the shoulder, and beginning in a way
-he evidently thought to be diplomatic, "you are growing older, and it
-is not good for you to be alone. Listen! it is time you should marry."
-
-Vane looked up quickly, and then struggled to repress a smile.
-
-"Listen, my child," continued the doctor, much pleased, "I have to
-propose a _parti_ of the most charming--but of the most charming! My
-wife's own cousin and two hundred thousand livres of _dot_! What say
-you?"
-
-Vane was touched, and found it hard to answer.
-
-"My child," the old man went on, "I love you like my own son--my
-own son, see you? You are not noble _de naissance--mais, le
-cœur--d'ailleurs_, neither are you _rôturier, non plus_. I have spoken
-of you to Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-aigue, and Madame la Comtesse
-_veut bien_. Her daughter is charming--but a child adorable! You will
-let me present you _comme futur_--what say you?"
-
-Vane bent over and took the hand of his old friend. "My father," he
-said, "I would do more for you than for any one living. You have been
-more than a father to me. God bless you for it! But this I cannot do. I
-shall never marry." Vane spoke seriously and with some tragic effect,
-like a Manfred or a Werther.
-
-The old man sighed deeply. He knew Vane too well to press the matter.
-"Ah!" said he, "you say you will never marry. I know better. You have
-seen some American--_quelque petite Américaine rusée_. _Hélas!_ and we
-might all have been so happy." The doctor said no more on the subject,
-but was sad and quiet during the rest of Vane's visit.
-
-He said nothing afterwards, except on Vane's departure. Then he
-pressed his hand: "Ah, consider, my child. A young girl of the most
-charming--of the _most_ charming--and two hundred thousand livres of
-_dot_!" Vane could only press his hand in return. And the last he saw
-of the doctor, he was standing still upon the Dieppe pier, rubbing his
-nose with an immense silk pocket-handkerchief.
-
-This was Vane's fifth trip across the Atlantic; and for the first time,
-he felt glad when the vessel's prow turned westward. Brittany, for him,
-represented the past; America the future. He was an American, after
-all. A day after his arrival he would be immersed in Wall Street--up in
-all the mysteries of exchange and rates, the stock-list his breviary
-and the ribbon of telegraph paper his oracle. Meanwhile, however, he
-dozed on the deck and essayed metrical translations of Boccaccio. He
-was reading the tale of the pot of basil one day, and thought for about
-half a morning of Miss Thomas. What she had to do with his reading, he
-could not see. But she was quite the most interesting figure in his
-mental gallery. A curious jumble was this modern state of society.
-Bare flowers sprang up in strange parterres; exotics grew outside
-of hot-houses, and common whiteweed inside. There ought to be some
-method of social transplanting; some way of grafting new blossoms on
-an old stock. But all American stock was good; American society was
-like a world of rounded pebbles grating on a beach; the buried pebbles
-were quite as fine as those on top; only these were more stirred and
-polished, so their colors came out best. And yet what common, poor
-stuff most of them were, after all! A pleasant trade, that of social
-lapidary! And Vane, perhaps for the first time, took note of the
-women around him. There was a Philadelphia girl, pretty and voluble;
-there was a young lady from Michigan, who had been to "college" in
-Massachusetts and finished herself abroad, alone, or in company with a
-dear friend from Connecticut. There was a girl from Cleveland, wealthy,
-marvellous, indescribable; and a young lady from New Orleans, with
-all the fire drawn from her cheeks into her eyes. There was a girl--a
-young woman, a young lady--a being feminine, from Boston, weighing and
-analyzing all things within her somewhat narrow mental horizon; and
-a social entity from New York, also of the feminine variety, but of
-orbit predicable and conventional eccentricities, her life a function
-of two variables, money and fashion. All these women were fair, and
-strange to him; and this, perhaps, was the only day of his life that he
-had definitely considered women from a contemporary point of view. His
-assured income was now eight thousand a year. Four of this went to his
-mother, three he spent; the rest he saved.
-
-Coming back to New York, he plunged into a mass of accumulated
-duties; it was a week before he found time to see anything of John;
-and two weeks before he called on Miss Thomas. He found her in a
-rather different mood than usual; a little sadder, a shade more
-self-conscious. "It is two weeks before you come to see me, and you did
-not answer my letter," she said.
-
-Vane could only bow. "If I had only known you wished me to," he said.
-
-"Ah, well! And what have you seen abroad?"
-
-"Nothing of interest to me now."
-
-"And what are you going to do this winter?"
-
-"I do not know. Stick to my trade," Vane added laughingly.
-
-"And shall we not go on with our reading?"
-
-"I should be only too happy."
-
-"What a conventional expression of willingness--what an enthusiastic
-acceptance!"
-
-"Conventions are the safest expressions of the truth."
-
-"What do you mean by 'safest'?"
-
-"The safest to me."
-
-She gave a little laugh, in which Vane joined. "I do not understand
-you."
-
-"You mean you are too skilful a fencer to admit it."
-
-"What do you mean by 'fencing'?"
-
-"The manner of our conversations."
-
-"You mean that it is not sincere--that it is badinage? Why do you do
-it, then?"
-
-"I am only too ready to change our ground."
-
-"I do not know what you mean."
-
-Vane bowed his disbelief in this remark and rose to go.
-
-"Ah! do not go yet. I am so lonely to-day, and it is just the hour of
-the day when there is nothing to do. I have no work and my poor eyes
-are too weak to read. They are not even useful!"
-
-"Why do you imply they are not ornamental? Why do you say what you do
-not mean?"
-
-"But I do mean it."
-
-"You know you have lovely eyes."
-
-"I thought you never made compliments," she said with a little pleased
-laugh.
-
-"You see your weak eyes are strong enough to keep me here." And rising
-to go, he extended his hand.
-
-"Ah! do not go yet." And taking his hand, she almost detained it
-gently. "I am so glad to see you once more."
-
-Vane laughed again. "Have you read De Musset's '_Il faut qu'une porte
-soit ouverte ou fermée_'?"
-
-"No; but I will read it. Why?"
-
-"Because my calls resemble that one. I am continually opening the door
-to go. Now if my call could have the same ending!" he added gallantly.
-
-She colored. "She has read it," thought Vane. "_Halte-là!_" And this
-time, perhaps rather precipitately, he took his leave for good. Miss
-Thomas gave another of her little pleased laughs, after he had closed
-the door. Vane had been thoroughly amused, and walked in a very
-contented frame of mind to John's. Coming into his smoking-room, he
-took a cigar and threw himself at full length upon the lounge. He could
-afford occasionally to smoke and take life easily now; it was different
-with him from the times, three years back, when he used to get his own
-breakfast in the little rooms on Washington Place.
-
-"Well, old man, how goes it?" said John, looking up with a light of
-friendship in his gray eyes which Vane's coming always brought to them.
-
-"Capitally! I have been passing the afternoon with Miss Thomas."
-
-"And how was she? Fascinating as ever?"
-
-"_Fascinating_ is not the word I like to use of her. It implies
-conscious effort."
-
-Vane was evidently off on a thesis, and Haviland settled himself on
-the sofa with a pipe. "I have seen many women whom the world calls
-fascinating, and they never attracted me at all. We look, admire and
-pass on. Now, Miss Thomas has all the brightness of a woman of the
-world, with the simplicity of a country maiden. If she has any charm,
-it is because she is just herself, as Nature made her." Vane spoke with
-the air of a knight defending abandoned beauty.
-
-"By the way (if you have finished your essay on an inamorata), I saw
-Ten Eyck to-day. He has come back from London, with a chance of being
-ambassador to Madrid, and is a better match than ever."
-
-"Ten Eyck? Who is Ten Eyck? Oh! I remember. Well, and what of it?" Vane
-added, after a pause.
-
-"Oh! nothing, nothing at all. He is the son of one of our New York
-Senators, you know; and has a brilliant future before him."
-
-"Bah! The most brilliant future a woman can have is a future with a man
-who loves her."
-
-"And where did you pick up that aphorism? Not from your French
-education, surely? I believe Miss Thomas loves him."
-
-"I may not be up in American ideas, John, owing to the French education
-you sneer at; but I certainly was brought up to resent a remark like
-that, made of a young girl I like."
-
-"I don't see what there is insulting in saying that a woman--for she
-is a woman, as you yourself admit--loves a man. I think it rather
-a compliment. American women rarely do, I can assure you. Their
-natures are like a New England spring--the sun must do a devilish
-deal of wooing before even so much as a green tendril is visible."
-And Haviland, who was just then devoted to the young lady of Puritan
-descent whom he has since married, fetched a deep sigh.
-
-Vane began to laugh again.
-
-"Well, well. In time, I, too, shall become a New Yorker. And by the
-way, John, speaking of that--is it customary here to invite a young
-lady to go to walk with you?"
-
-"Why, certainly, if you like. Miss Thomas has gone many a time, I
-fancy."
-
-"I was not thinking of Miss Thomas," said Vane, pettishly.
-
-
-
-
-VIII.
-
-
-VANE had not intended to go to Mrs. Roster's ball the next night; but
-he went, nevertheless. Vane was always a rather cynical spectator at
-large parties in New York. Somehow, it was so different from all that
-he had hoped; it was so like Paris, with more frivolity and fewer
-social gifts. A cynic is commonly a snubbed sentimentalist, who takes
-it out in growling. Vane had sought the world because he was lonely;
-but it seemed to him more than ever that he was much less lonely when
-alone. It is isolation, not loneliness, that saddens a man of sense;
-for his sense tells him that it is the world which is likely to be
-right, and proves him a solitary fool.
-
-This evening Vane did devote himself to Miss Thomas; and a charming
-conversation they had. "You are quite different from what I thought you
-were," she said. "I used to think you were serious and queer."
-
-"Really," said Vane; "and what do you think me now?"
-
-"At least, I do not think you serious and queer. Certainly, not
-_serious_."
-
-"But I am."
-
-"Can that be?" There was a heightened color in her cheek.
-
-"As you see me. Will you go to walk with me next Sunday afternoon?"
-
-Miss Thomas looked up suddenly with her soft eyes; then as suddenly
-cast them down again. Vane must have seen that she blushed a little.
-
-"Yes." And then, "if you do not leave Fifth Avenue," she added.
-
-"After that I shall certainly ask you to go into the Park," he said.
-
-"You had better not--at least not before the Sunday afternoon--or I
-will not go with you at all," laughed Miss Baby, roguishly.
-
-Vane bent and took her hand for a moment; as it hung among the orange
-leaves in the conservatory. Then he bowed and left her without an
-apology. She did not draw her hand away; and as Vane looked back at
-her from the door she was, this time, blushing violently. Vane himself
-walked home in a somewhat agitated frame of mind, and went to sleep;
-and when he woke up in the morning, he discovered that he was very much
-in love with Baby Thomas. This discovery caused him more surprise than
-disapproval; and yet he felt bound to confess himself a good deal of a
-fool.
-
-He thought of it several times during the day, in the intervals of
-business, and not without considerable mental invective. However, as he
-walked home in the afternoon, he became less out of humor with himself.
-She certainly was a very charming girl, and well worth winning. At all
-events it was pleasant to be in love with her. He expected to see her
-that evening, and the prospect gave him a great deal of happiness,
-not without a slight seasoning of excitement, that made quite a novel
-enjoyment in his life. Certainly, he reflected, he was very much in
-love. It was surprising how it had grown in the night--like Jack and
-his bean-stalk. However, he saw no particular reason why he should try
-to cut it down. Perhaps he secretly doubted whether he could do so if
-he chose; and the doubt was agreeable.
-
-Miss Thomas was not at the party that evening; and Vane found himself
-a little uneasy in consequence. He left early, and went to see John
-Haviland.
-
-"John," said he, "I am in love with Miss Thomas."
-
-"Many of us have been through that," said John, calmly; "it is not
-fatal."
-
-"But," said Vane, "my constitution may be more delicate. I am not a
-hide-bound rhinoceros."
-
-"Neither," said John, "am I." And he defended the aspersion upon his
-epidermis with a quadrupedal sigh.
-
-"But I want to marry her."
-
-"That is also a symptom. You need not do it, however."
-
-"What do you know against her?"
-
-"Nothing; but Ten Eyck has rather too heavy a prior mortgage."
-
-"I don't care for Ten Eyck."
-
-"The question is, whether she does."
-
-"I know very well that she can't."
-
-"She would hardly wish you to know the opposite, if the opposite were
-true."
-
-"Bah! I know something about women----"
-
-"The devil himself can't know a woman who doesn't know herself."
-
-"Anyhow, it is a free field----"
-
-"And plenty of favor."
-
-"She hasn't seen Ten Eyck for years----"
-
-"The last time was this afternoon."
-
-"What?"
-
-"I saw them walking on Fourth Avenue, as I came up-town in a horse-car."
-
-"Humph!" said Vane, and he dropped the conversation.
-
-For some weeks he said nothing more to John about Miss Thomas; and
-during that time he was trying, with more or less success, to persuade
-himself of his own folly. But he found it more easy to bend his
-energies to the subjugation of Miss Thomas's heart than of his own.
-And John noticed that he left his business rather earlier in the
-afternoon than usual, and always took the Fourth Avenue car up-town.
-In his evenings he exhausted a large part of the most cynical French
-literature in convincing himself that he was a fool. But in spite of
-Balzac and Scribe, he found that he looked forward anxiously to the
-evenings when he was to meet her; and it was more easy for him to laugh
-at his own infatuation--no, interest was the name he gave it--than to
-go for a couple of days without seeing its object.
-
-The first Sunday that he let pass without a visit, he was very nervous
-all the evening, and going to bed early made a vain effort to sleep.
-What a--qualified--fool he was, and yet how he did love that girl! He
-got up and read Heine by way of disillusion, and opened the book at the
-quatrain,
-
-  "Wer zum ersten Male liebt
-  Sei's auch glücklos, ist ein Gott;
-  Aber wer zum zweiten Male
-  Glücklos liebt, Der ist ein Narr."
-
-How good! How very good! And Vane laid the book down with much applause.
-
-Decidedly the best way to win Miss Thomas was to give her her own
-way. He could leave her to her own devices for a time. If she loved
-Ten Eyck, there was nothing to be done by seeing her; if she did not,
-a little delay would do no harm. If she loved nobody, his chance was
-assured.
-
-This settled, Vane went to bed with the easy mind of a general who has
-planned the morning's march.
-
-
-
-
-IX.
-
-
-VANE'S strategy was doubtless perfect; but in the morning he found a
-note sealed and superscribed in a charmingly pretty feminine hand.
-"Dear Mr. Vane," it began, "Miss Roster's skating party has been
-given up. She begged me to tell you; but, as I have not seen you, I
-feel obliged to send you this note. If you have nothing better to do,
-why will not you come that evening? It is so long since we have read
-together.--Winifred Thomas."
-
-"Now," thought Vane, "why should Miss Roster send word to him by Miss
-Thomas?" He felt that he could not be positively rude, so at eight in
-the evening he presented himself. Miss Thomas was apparently alone in
-the house. She was sitting in the parlor, with no light but that of
-the fire, into which she was looking with her deep blue eyes; her face
-was pale, except that one cheek was rosy with the heat, imperfectly
-screened from the flame with her fan. She received Vane coldly; he drew
-up a chair, noticing, as he did so, her foot, which was covered only
-with a slipper and a thin web of open-work black stocking, and was very
-pretty.
-
-Miss Thomas seemed _distraite_ and depressed; he had never seen her in
-that mood before, and sought in vain to draw her into conversation. She
-answered only in monosyllables and still looked dreamily into the fire.
-Vane felt as if he had unwittingly offended her. Finally, just as he
-rose to go--
-
-"Why are you so strange to-night?"
-
-"I--I?" stammered Vane.
-
-"Yes." She lifted her small head and looked full at him. It seemed
-as if there was a tear lost somewhere in the depth of her eyes. Vane
-became conscious that he was a brute, and thought for the first time,
-odd as it may seem, of the walk which he had asked her to take the
-Sunday before. He had forgotten the walk entirely.
-
-"I had suddenly to go to Pittsburg." This was true; but he had returned
-on the Saturday. And yet he felt that he must say something, if only to
-suppress his growing inclination to take her hand in his.
-
-"What do you mean?" said she wonderingly. They were both sitting; Vane
-staring at her helplessly.
-
-"Why, when I broke our engagement to go to walk----" Truly he was
-floundering more than ever.
-
-"Oh! were we engaged to go to walk?"
-
-A pretty mess he had made of it indeed.
-
-"I am only too glad you have forgotten," he said; and then rising, with
-an awkward bow, he got himself and his shattered reputation for _savoir
-faire_ out of the room. After putting on his overcoat, he turned back
-to the threshold of the parlor. "Will you go to walk next Sunday?" he
-asked bluntly.
-
-"I must go to church that afternoon. I am so sorry."
-
-Vane bowed again, and took his departure more piqued than he was
-willing to acknowledge. As he went down the steps he heard a few chords
-upon the piano. It was the beginning of the love-song from Francesca
-da Rimini. After all, he thought, why should he be offended? She had
-behaved just as he should have wished her to. He could hardly expect
-her to acknowledge that she had waited for him in vain. How pretty she
-had looked in the firelight!
-
-The next Sunday, about sunset, as he and John were returning from a
-long walk in the country, two figures came out of a small church on
-Sixth Avenue, well known for the excellence of its music. Miss Thomas
-was one, the other John recognized as Ten Eyck. She did not seem to
-see them, but the two walked rapidly ahead of them the length of the
-block, and then turned down a side street. Vane pretended to be wholly
-unconscious of the scene. John alone gave a grunt of surprise. And for
-two weeks or more Vane treated Miss Thomas with alternate neglect and
-familiarity when he met her in society; the former when he found it
-possible to avoid her, the latter when he was necessarily thrown with
-her. One night at a german she gave him a favor. Vane, after dancing
-with her, felt obliged, in common politeness, to talk with her for a
-few moments. He sought refuge in that sort of clumsy pleasantry which
-our English models have taught us to call chaff; she said nothing, but
-looked at him wonderingly, with large troubled eyes. She seemed as if
-grieved at his manner and too proud to reproach him with it. Could she
-really love the man? thought Vane. How could she? He felt as if the
-suspicion did her an injury. Vane's heart melted to her as he came
-home that night. He had mentally judged her as he would have judged a
-woman in one of his cynical French comedies. He had treated her like
-a character in a seventeenth century memoir. And how much above such
-judgment was this sweet American girl! She was fond of her friends, and
-true to them, and frank to him, so that he saw that she cared for him.
-What did she know of the world, or of older societies, or the women in
-his wicked French memoirs? She lived in new, pure, honest America; not
-in the chronicles of the _Œil-de-bœuf_. And Vane felt that the best
-amends he could make was to ask her to become his wife. When he hinted
-this intention to Haviland that philosopher, for the first and only
-time in his life, improvised a couplet:
-
-  "Jamais la femme ne varie,
-  Bien fol est toujours qui s'y fie."
-
-Having got off this gâtha, John retired to his pipe, and became, like a
-Hindoo god, impassive, ugly, and impenetrable.
-
-
-
-
-X.
-
-
-FOR some weeks Vane rested satisfied with the conclusions arrived at in
-the last chapter. It was so satisfactory to have made such a resolve;
-and besides, there was no cause for hastening the event. There was
-singularly little impulse in his inclination. Most certainly, he meant
-to put his fate to the test; but not at point-blank range. Vane was
-cool enough to proceed warily; and he still clung sufficiently to the
-precepts of his French authorities in matters feminine to know better
-than that. For a repulse always puts the garrison on its guard, and
-doubles the difficulty of investment; and a woman's heart should be
-taken by siege, not assault. Other supplies should be cut off; and
-then the citadel be undermined and sapped in a quiet way. The attacker
-should imply boundless admiration, without actually committing himself
-to a more particular sentiment--flirtation from behind earthworks--and
-so, without being exposed to rebuff, gradually surround her with such
-an atmosphere of incense that at last it becomes indispensable to her;
-and, after one or two futile sallies, she falls before his arms. This
-is the wisdom of the serpent; but Vane knew that it was never wasted
-on a woman, however sweet and dovelike; if you wish her to take your
-attentions seriously, you should make her think they are not serious.
-And if Vane was willing to marry, he had no mind to be refused. When
-Vane expounded these theories to John, the latter seemed relieved.
-
-A lover in New York is at no loss for opportunities to win, if he has
-leisure to woo; but Vane suffered many chances to pass by without
-improving them. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with his love, with
-himself, with his life as he found it; he remembered, like all boys,
-trying to live as if he were the hero of a novel; now it was altogether
-too difficult not to live like the hero of a comedy. Vane abhorred the
-eighteenth century, and all its belongings; but it seemed to him that
-the world around him, and himself as part of it, were subjects apter to
-a Congreve than a Homer.
-
-All the more, he sought to wind his affections around their object;
-he would not admit to himself that there was something wanting even
-in her. But the winter was nearly over before he resolved to take any
-decisive step; and Miss Thomas had been growing prettier every day.
-Mrs. Levison Gower was to give a sleigh-ride. They were to drive in a
-procession of single sleighs, and stop at some one's country house for
-an hour's skating. This opportunity would be most propitious; and Vane
-decided that Miss Baby Thomas should be his companion.
-
-Miss Thomas seemed really very sorry. Vane admitted this afterwards,
-when he sought to reason himself out of his consequent ill-humor. But
-she was already engaged to ride that day in Mr. Wemyss's sleigh. It
-was so unfortunate, and she was so much disappointed! Vane, however,
-decided to postpone his proposal of marriage to some other occasion;
-so he drove out sedately with the young and beautiful chaperone. With
-her he made no sufficient effort at flirtation, and Mrs. Gower never
-forgave him the omission.
-
-The ice was very good; and Vane was disporting himself meditatively in
-one corner of the pond when Miss Thomas whirled by him on the "outer
-edge." Miss Thomas was a beautiful skater; and, as she passed, she
-stretched out a crooked cane as if inviting him to join her. Vane had
-no desire to refuse; and in a minute the two were rolling along in
-strong, sweeping curves, the girl's blue eyes gleaming with excitement
-beneath their long black lashes. Her eyes had the still, violet blue
-of a cleft in a glacier; Vane could not help looking into them once or
-twice. The ice was broken.
-
-Neither of them had much to say; but for an hour or more they skated
-together. The crooked stick, proving too long, was soon discarded; and
-they skated hand in hand. On the shore, Wemyss was devoting himself to
-the matron. He could not skate.
-
-Finally, the signal of recall was given. Miss Thomas made no movement
-in the direction of the return, and Vane was naturally too polite to
-make the first. They could see Mrs. Gower at the other end of the pond,
-skurrying about, like a young hen after her chickens. Suddenly Miss
-Thomas discovered that they ought to go back; but when they returned
-to the shore they were the last of the party, and had the log, which
-served the purpose of a seat, to themselves. Vane stooped to take off
-his companion's skates, and in shaking them free Miss Thomas brought
-the blade of one across his hand with some force, causing a slight
-scratch on the back of his finger. She gave a little cry of horror, and
-then, as the finger bled profusely, pulled out her own handkerchief,
-and, before Vane could prevent her, bound it around the wound.
-
-"It was my fault," said she. "You can give the handkerchief to me when
-we next meet."
-
-As they walked back, Vane, dropping behind, unwound the handkerchief
-and put it in an inside pocket, then drew his glove hastily over the
-scratch, which had already stopped bleeding.
-
-Going home, Mrs. Gower found Vane much more interesting. The heat of
-the noon had melted the snow, so that the sleighing was not good,
-and it was dusk before they got into the city. But when Vane left
-Mrs. Gower's house for his own dinner, the sleigh which contained
-Miss Thomas had not returned, though Wemyss was there, having driven
-back with Miss Bellamy. Coming to his rooms, Vane unfolded the little
-handkerchief and kissed it; and that night, when he went to sleep, it
-was in his hand beneath the pillow. In the morning, he looked at it.
-It was a cheap little thing enough, made of pieces of linen or muslin
-stuff, looking like dolls' clothes sewed together, but giving the
-effect of lace at a distance.
-
-Vane went to a store on Broadway and purchased a handkerchief of the
-same size, of old point lace, and the same afternoon called upon Miss
-Thomas. "I have brought you your handkerchief," said he, giving her
-the one he had bought, folded up. "I am very much obliged to you for
-lending to me."
-
-Miss Thomas took it, looked at it for a moment, then at him and thanked
-him. "It was of no consequence," said she. "It was an old one." Vane
-went home, much excited, perhaps a trifle disturbed in mind. Such a
-rapid victory had hardly been foreseen by him. She had taken from him,
-as a present, a valuable bit of lace; which must certainly mean that
-she would take him, if he offered himself. And he was not quite sure,
-now that the prospect was so near, that he really wished to marry Miss
-Baby Thomas. He liked her immensely, and she certainly amused him more
-than any other girl he knew; but he was not quite sure that he wished
-to marry--at all. Now that the prize was within his reach, he shrank
-back a little from plucking it. Four years ago, in Brittany, Vane had
-felt himself an old man; but now it seemed that he was "ower young to
-marry yet." These thoughts gave him much trouble; and in the meantime
-he abstained from further complication by not calling on Miss Thomas,
-and, at the same time, subjected himself to much self-analysis. Could
-he honestly be content to go through life with this girl by his side?
-He knew enough of life to know that it mattered very little how often a
-man made a fool of himself, if he did not do so on the day when he got
-married. Now Miss Thomas was certainly a very nice, sweet girl--but did
-he love her enough to marry her? The outcome of his deliberation was in
-the affirmative; but--another but.
-
-Ten days had elapsed since he gave her the handkerchief, when finally,
-one Sunday afternoon, he called to see her. He half expected that he
-should ask her to marry him. But he did not do so. When the call was
-nearly over, she excused herself for a moment, and, going up-stairs,
-returned with the handkerchief in her hand. "You have brought back the
-wrong handkerchief," said she. Vane started with a shock of surprise he
-could not repress.
-
-"I--I brought the wrong one?" he said awkwardly.
-
-"Yes."
-
-"It was the one you gave me."
-
-"Oh, no! it was not. This one is real lace."
-
-"The--the washerwoman must have made a mistake."
-
-Miss Thomas said nothing.
-
-"You must keep it all the same, Miss Thomas."
-
-"I cannot keep what belongs to other people," said she unappreciatively.
-
-Vane bit his lips. "I--I will make it right with the washerwoman," said
-he clumsily.
-
-Miss Thomas's look was more hopelessly unsympathetic than ever; and,
-folding the bit of lace, she laid it on the table by his elbow.
-
-"The fact is," Vane went on, with a pretended burst of confidence, "the
-one you lent me was ruined: so I did get this one instead. Please take
-it."
-
-"It is much more valuable than mine," said she coldly.
-
-"Please take it," said Vane again, with the iteration of a school-boy.
-
-Miss Thomas began to take offence.
-
-"How can you expect me to do such a thing?" said she, rising as if to
-dismiss him. Evidently a bold push was necessary. He took the bit of
-lace and threw it quickly into the open fire, counting on the feminine
-instinct which would not suffer her to see old lace destroyed. With a
-little cry, Miss Thomas bent down and pulled it from the coals.
-
-"Let it burn," said he, rising and putting on his gloves. "If you do
-not want it, I am sure I do not." And he silently refused to take the
-handkerchief, pretending to busy his hands with his hat and cane.
-"Good-by," said he.
-
-"Good-by," replied Miss Thomas, coldly, laying the handkerchief back on
-the centre-table.
-
-When Vane got to the hall he looked at her a moment in turning to open
-the front door. She was standing before the fire with a heightened
-color in her face, whether of a blush or anger he could not tell.
-
-
-
-
-XI.
-
-
-VANE went home much discontented with himself. He had not only behaved
-like an ass, but he had made a blunder. He had gone much further than
-he meant to in seeking not to go so far. And he found that he loved
-her more than he thought, now that he had displeased her. He wanted
-diversion that night, and did not know what to do. Miss Thomas was his
-usual diversion. John was away. Finally, after dinner, he happened into
-Wallack's theatre--it was the interval between the first and second
-acts. The first person that he saw was Miss Thomas, and a young man in
-evening dress was seated next her. Vane paid little attention to the
-play, and at the end of the second act he went out without speaking to
-her.
-
-This was simply incredible! Vane could not conceive of it. It was a
-pitch of innocence beyond the range of imagination of a man educated
-in France. This was America with a vengeance. It must be that she
-did not care what people said. Could she know that bets were made at
-the club upon the state of her own affections and the sincerity of
-her admirers? Vane was much offended. He was angry with her for her
-own sake. At first he thought he would go and tell her so; then he
-reflected that the affair of the handkerchief would put him in rather a
-false position, and, after all, she was not worth the trouble. For the
-present, at least, he would not go near her.
-
-The next night Vane went to a "german" at Mrs. Haviland's. Miss Thomas
-was there dancing with Mr. Wemyss. She received him very pleasantly.
-He danced with her once or twice, and then sat down beside her, Wemyss
-not coming back. Miss Thomas was dressed in a white, cloudy dress, with
-sprays of violet and smilax. A wreath of the green vine was in her
-black hair, and she had a large bouquet of the violets in her hand,
-nearly the color of her eyes. The dress was cut low to a point in front
-and behind, showing the superb poise of her small head upon her neck.
-Whoever had sent her flowers must have known what her dress was to be,
-or he could not have sent her the violets to match.
-
-When Vane left, he had made an appointment for a walk the next fine
-afternoon. She had said nothing about the handkerchief. Vane feared,
-every morning, to find the parcel containing it at his rooms, but it
-was not sent back. He was encouraged by this, and began to make excuses
-to himself for her being at the theatre. This still gave him much
-anxiety, and he half decided that he would speak to her about it.
-
-At last there came a fine day for the walk, and Vane called at
-her house at four. He had also called one day before, but she had
-complained that it was too cloudy and looked like rain. This day he
-found her ready. They went up Fifth Avenue to Fifty-ninth Street;
-then he persuaded her to go into the park. She fascinated him that
-afternoon. There was something peculiarly feminine about Miss Thomas.
-Although her hair was black, it was not coarse and lustrous, but
-very fine and soft, dead black in color. A soft, creamy dress hung
-lovingly about her figure. She talked much about herself in a sisterly
-sort of way. Vane felt a desire to protect her. She had a gentle way
-of yielding, of trusting to him, of allowing him to persuade her to
-continue the walk. They sat down a moment on a wooden bench among some
-seringa-bushes; above them were the branches of an oak just leafing
-out, swaying in the wind and casting changing flecks of light and shade
-upon the gravel path and the folds of her gown. There were soft lights
-in her face, and her eyes were like two blue gentians.
-
-"Miss Thomas, I have a question to ask you," began Vane, suddenly. "You
-will promise not to be offended?"
-
-"Yes," said she innocently, opening her eyes wider.
-
-"Are you engaged to be married?"
-
-"No," said she almost instantly, as if without reflecting. Then she
-blushed violently, and silently rose to go home.
-
-
-
-
-XII.
-
-
-VANE wished himself at the bottom of the lake, if that ornamental piece
-of water were deep enough to drown. It seemed like one of those foolish
-things one does in a nightmare, without being able to prevent it. Now
-first he saw how impossible it was to go on and talk to her--to preach
-a sermon to her--as he had thought he intended. It would mortally
-offend her if she were not mortally offended already. What right had he
-to criticise her conduct, particularly when criticism would certainly
-imply disapproval? With all his reproach came a glow of satisfaction.
-She was certainly not in love with any one, she had answered so
-instantly. Then with this thought came the sting again that he had
-wounded her.
-
-"I--I saw you at the theatre the other night."
-
-Miss Thomas remained silent.
-
-"Were you not at the theatre with Mr. Ten Eyck?" persisted Vane.
-
-"I was at the theatre with my brother," replied Miss Thomas, icily.
-"Mr. Ten Eyck sat in his seat for a few moments, I believe. Will you
-stop that car, if you please, it is getting so late."
-
-Vane did so with an ill grace. He had counted on the walk home to alter
-her impressions, and now this opportunity was lost. They took seats and
-sat for several blocks in silence. Vane looked at her covertly, and saw
-that the flush of indignation had given place to pallor, and that she
-looked grieved. He could have wrung his own neck.
-
-Coming finally to her door, he felt that he must say something. He
-stood a moment on the stoop. Then, "Miss Thomas, please forgive me," he
-said gravely. She hesitated a moment.
-
-"Are you offended?" he added, for the sake of something to say. "Pray
-forgive me. I had a reason for asking, and an excuse."
-
-"I might forgive you," she said, with her hand on the door, "but it
-would have been better for you not to have said it." She opened the
-door and went into the house, leaving Vane on the threshold with a
-distinct impression that she was going to cry.
-
-He walked along, mechanically, in the direction of his rooms, feeling
-his cheeks burn. That he had bungled--that he had committed a social
-gaucherie, he knew well enough; but what troubled him more than this
-was that he had given her real cause for offence, he had hurt her. If
-she could only know what pain this thought brought to him! Fool that he
-was, he had worn his clumsy, jejune mask of cynicism, and had not once
-shown to her his truer self. He was more at fault than the world was;
-and she was not of the world, and he had blamed her for it.
-
-He stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street,
-half-way down the hill, and looked at his watch. It was nearly six.
-He did not wish to go back to his rooms; he had no engagement that
-evening. As he stood irresolute, he took off his hat to Mrs. Gower,
-who passed by in her carriage. Then he resolved to go down to his
-office and work that evening, as was his habit when he wished to banish
-from his mind a too persistent thought. He walked back through the
-cross-street, to get the railway on Sixth Avenue, and still thinking
-how Miss Thomas was probably crying over his rudeness, locked in her
-own room. How _could_ he have done it! As he approached her house, he
-felt almost tempted to go in again; but the front door opened slowly,
-and, after a momentary pause, he saw Ten Eyck come out, walk down the
-steps and rapidly away. Vane grew very angry with himself and her;
-until he reflected that she could not possibly have known that Ten Eyck
-was coming that afternoon. And, indeed, he probably had not been let in.
-
-None the less did Vane work savagely through the evening, taking a
-lonely dinner at the "down-town" Delmonico's. At about midnight he left
-his office and walked all the way up to his room, smoking, and thinking
-what he could do to win Miss Thomas's forgiveness. The gas was burning
-low in his study, and he saw a square white packet among the letters
-lying on his table. He felt that shuddering weakness in the loins, as
-if all within were turned to water, which he had learned to recognize
-as the work of that first apprehension of a serious misfortune which
-comes a moment before the mind has fully grasped it. He sank upon
-the sofa with a long breath, and looked at the letter silently for
-several minutes. It was a neat note, beautifully sealed and delicately
-addressed; like all her notes, bearing no evidence of a servant's dirty
-pocket. He opened it, fearing to find in it the lace handkerchief
-without a word; but no, there was a note with it:
-
-    "MY DEAR MR. VANE--
-
-   "I send you back your handkerchief. It is still a little burned; but
-   perhaps you can make some use of it. I ought to have returned it
-   sooner, but was having it mended.
-
-             "Sincerely yours,
-                              "WINIFRED THOMAS."
-
-So! thought Vane; it was all over now. He had bungled it shamefully.
-
-
-
-
-XIII.
-
-
-HE went to sleep as soon as he could--which was not very soon; and woke
-up, with a sob, from a dream in which they were both very miserable.
-It was an hour earlier than his usual time for rising, and, as he went
-into the park, the birds were singing quite as they might have sung in
-the country.
-
-On considering her note critically, he did not think it so hopeless
-as it had seemed in the night. And again he repaired to his office.
-Business was very good at this time, and Vane was rapidly becoming rich.
-
-He waited many days for a chance to speak to her; and finally the
-chance arrived, at an evening party. Curiously enough, he was more
-afraid of her in a simple morning frock, worn in her own house, with
-the little edging of white lace around the throat, than in evening
-dress, in all the splendor of her woman's beauty. He did not like her
-so well with bare neck, and bare arms, and a sweeping cloud of white
-about her, and white satin slippers. She was more like the other women
-one could meet in the world. She looked at him coldly; but none the
-less did he determine to speak to her. Her partner left her at once;
-and Vane led her into the embrasure of a window.
-
-"I want you to forgive me my question of the other afternoon."
-
-Miss Thomas made no answer.
-
-"You would, if you knew my excuse."
-
-"I don't see what possible excuse there can be," she said, gravely.
-
-"There is one--and the best of all excuses," he added, in a lower tone.
-
-"I do not understand you."
-
-"Are you sure?" said Vane, with a low laugh.
-
-She met his eyes, calmly, for an appreciable duration of time. "I wish
-you would tell me what it is," she went on seriously.
-
-"Some time, perhaps, I will."
-
-"Why not now?"
-
-Vane shook his head. "I will tell you when you take back the
-handkerchief."
-
-"I shall never take back the handkerchief."
-
-"You do not know how persistent I am. I shall ask you every week until
-you do."
-
-Miss Thomas slightly moved her shoulders. He could have fallen at her
-feet then and there. It was dark behind the curtain, all except her
-eyes, and she looked at him almost tenderly, and made no effort to end
-the conversation. Vane felt that he was very deeply in love with her.
-
-"Do you really wish to know the reason why I asked you that question?"
-he said, hastily. "Do you ask me now?"
-
-"Perhaps I shall ask you some time," she said, dropping her eyes.
-
-Vane bit his lip, and clenched his fingers, which had been dangerously
-near hers. At first he did not know what to reply.
-
-"As for the handkerchief, you shall surely take it some time. I will
-give it to you when you are married."
-
-She blushed deeply. "Thank you," she said, "I would rather have a new
-one, then. But it is time for me to go home--or--I think I should like
-an ice first. Will you get me one?"
-
-When Vane returned, two or three men were about her. She took the ice,
-but, after tasting it, put it aside indifferently. "I really think I
-must be going now," she said, giving her arm to one of her companions.
-
-Vane was determined not to be outdone, so he went to find her carriage,
-and had the pleasure of shutting the door himself; the two other men
-standing by. "Good night," said he, in a low tone. She made no reply
-until he had got back to the sidewalk; then, "Good night, every one!"
-she called out as the horses sprang away, restive with the cold. Vane
-went back to the supper-room to get a glass of champagne, and then
-walked home.
-
-After this, he decided to leave the course of events with her. He had
-surely told her, as plainly as a man could tell a woman, that he loved
-her. He had also told her that he would ask her to marry him whenever
-she wished--whenever she would forgive him a rude question for which
-his love was the best possible excuse. So two months passed without his
-speaking to her seriously. But he felt well assured that he loved her.
-
-
-
-
-XIV.
-
-
-ONE day in June, Vane sat in his office with two notes open on the desk
-before him. One was from Mrs. Levison Gower, inviting him to make one
-of a moonlight picnic party. They were to be conveyed up the Hudson
-in Mr. Gower's steam-launch, land just above Yonkers, take possession
-of a grove, and have dinner there for no other reason than that they
-might dine with much more convenience and propriety on the deck of the
-yacht. The other note before Vane was from Dr. Kérouec, in Brittany,
-announcing a serious change in the condition of his mother.
-
-He had already decided to take the next steamer for Havre. He had been
-making his preparations all the day; but for some reason had postponed
-answering Mrs. Gower's note. And now he was face to face with a strong
-desire to see Miss Thomas once more before he went away. And, after
-all, why should he not go? His mother had been ill for so many years,
-and he felt that she would still be ill for so many years more; and
-Mrs. Gower's party was to be the day before the departure of his
-steamer. He knew that Miss Thomas would be there. He had quite decided
-not to call at her house again; he had not called there for the last
-two months; but he longed for a glimpse of her face to take away with
-him. It might be so long before he came back, and so many things might
-happen while he was gone.
-
-Miss Thomas was the first person Vane saw, standing by the entrance, as
-he went on board the yacht. She was evidently looking for some one; but
-when she saw Vane, she turned away. Vane kept up a rapid conversation
-with his hostess until a lady arrived whom he knew, when he walked with
-her to the other side of the yacht. Meantime he could see that Miss
-Thomas was covertly watching his movements, and talking with no one.
-Her eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went; but he was careful not
-to get within speaking distance.
-
-After many delays, caused by languid guests, late hampers, and the
-vacillations of Mrs. Gower herself, the little steamer cast off and
-proceeded up the river. Mrs. Gower took command in the yacht, extending
-her jurisdiction, as Vane observed, quite to the limit of the pilot's
-politeness. At first, owing to the smells of the manufacturing
-establishments which lined the river, and divers distasteful sights
-about the wharves, but little attention was paid to the scenery; but
-when the city was left behind, and the western shore grew bolder,
-Nature was rewarded with all the adjectives of feminine enthusiasm.
-Vane heard less of this, however, as conversation grew more general.
-When due appreciation of the Hudson's beauties had been shown, the
-company broke up into groups of two or three camp-stools, and every
-little clump fell to discussing its neighbors. Here and there was a
-group of two--a male and female--oblivious of neighbors and discussing
-each other. The Palisades looked on in silence. It seemed to Vane that
-the occasion was only saved from insignificance by the presence of Miss
-Thomas.
-
-When they touched shore at the grove appointed for the picnic, most
-of the ladies and gentlemen, eager to land as if it had been an ocean
-voyage, crowded to the gangway. Mrs. Gower felt it her duty to show the
-way, and skilfully forced a passage through her guests, Vane, who was
-at that moment busied with the duty of protecting her, following in
-her wake. Her rapid motion caused a sort of eddy in which Vane moved
-behind her without much effort; so that, looking about him, he saw Miss
-Thomas beside him. Her companion was a young man with an eye-glass,
-looking like a student in college, the consciousness of his own merits
-continually at war with the world's estimate of them; so that the
-unceasing struggle of a proper self-assertion left him little breath
-for words. In one of the pauses of his conversation, Miss Thomas turned
-rapidly to Vane.
-
-"Are you never going to speak to me again?"
-
-"Have you forgiven me yet?"
-
-This little interchange of questions was so quick that it hardly could
-have been noticed by any one. Miss Thomas turned back to her companion
-before he had even time to miss her attention; and indeed his mind
-was fully occupied in grappling for his next remark; while Vane was
-incontinently swept over the gang-plank in the vortex of Mrs. Gower.
-
-She certainly looked very pretty that day, thought Vane, as he walked
-up the hill with the latter lady; but he was sure now that he had no
-mind to be refused by her. Better even the present than that. She had
-on another soft, clinging dress, of ivory white, which only lent an
-added charm to her skin of whiter ivory, the dead black hair, and those
-wonderful violet--"Ah--oh, yes," said Vane to Mrs. Gower; and then,
-seeing this lady laugh, "Yes, very funny--hah!"
-
-"I was telling you of Mrs. Grayling's sad experience in Rome," said
-Mrs. Gower, demurely; "but I fear you were not thinking of her."
-
-Vane vowed to keep a tighter rein on his thoughts thereafter; and they
-came to a little glade in the wood, where the servants were laying
-table-cloths on the turf. The dinner was very gay. Some ladies screamed
-when a daddy-longlegs ran into the lobster salad, but an occasional
-pine-needle, falling into a glass of champagne, seemed but to add to
-its flavor. It was considered _de rigueur_ to sit upon the grass;
-but most of the men found it very awkward to assume attitudes of any
-decorative value, and the college student in particular was heard to
-wonder audibly how the deuce the Romans did it. After the feast, the
-company divided itself into couples and scattered in the woods. Miss
-Thomas did not leave the table; and Mrs. Gower felt obliged to wait for
-the last. Wemyss stayed with her. As Vane passed behind Miss Thomas,
-she called him to her.
-
-"I have something to tell you to-day."
-
-"Will not some other time do?" said Vane, "I am getting a glass of
-wine for Mrs. Gower." The girl looked at him, but did not seem to take
-offence.
-
-"I may never tell you, if I do not tell you to-day," she answered,
-seriously, in a low voice. Vane looked at her surprised; she bore his
-gaze for half a second, and then let her own eyes drop. The student was
-looking on with parted lips. "Oh, Mr. Bronson," said she, immediately,
-"I wish you would get me a glass of champagne--and seltzer, too!" She
-said the "too" with an inflection that made it sound like _do_.
-
-The youth departed on his errand; and Vane also left, saying that
-he would be back in a moment; but he was saved a double journey by
-observing that some one else had brought Mrs. Gower her wine and had
-taken his seat beside her. Vane returned to Miss Thomas, passing
-rapidly over in his mind what had happened in the four months since he
-had asked her that fatal question, and trying to decide upon a course
-of action for himself. She had made no effort to have him speak to her
-before to-day. But by her presence the picnic was quite saved from
-insignificance.
-
-"I have come back, Miss Thomas," he said, seriously. "What can you have
-to tell me?"
-
-Miss Thomas looked at the tent, before which Bronson was
-standing--waiting for her seltzer. Most of the guests had left the
-place, and the servants were clearing away the dinner. The moon was
-just rising.
-
-"Will you not come for a walk?" said Vane. Miss Thomas gave him her
-hand, and he helped her to her feet. "I am forgetting your wine," he
-said, afterwards. He was ill at ease and nervous.
-
-"You know that I never drink wine at parties," she answered; and just
-as Bronson came back to the place where she had been sitting, they
-disappeared in the forest. Bronson had a long neck supported by a very
-stiff standing collar, and when his dignity was compromised he had a
-way of throwing back his head and resting his chin upon the points of
-his collar. He did this now, and the Adam's apple in his throat worked
-prominently. Then, after looking gravely a moment at the seat which had
-been Miss Thomas's, as if to be satisfied that she had really gone, he
-drank the champagne himself and went back to the tent, where he found a
-male acquaintance, to whom he proposed a smoke. "It is such a relief to
-get away for a minute from the women," he murmured, as he threw himself
-on the grass and rolled a cigarette. "By the way, did you see that
-little girl I was with? Nice dress, you know--quiet little thing. Well,
-by gad, sir, I believe there's something up between her and that fellow
-Vane."
-
-
-
-
-XV.
-
-
-AFTER they left the place of the dinner, Miss Thomas walked on for some
-time in silence, and Vane had inwardly resolved not to be the first to
-break their peace of mind. The woods, being part of a private estate,
-had received some care. There was no underbrush, and they were walking
-in a well-kept path. The moon was now high enough to make a play of
-light among the leafage and to outline with a silver tracery the smooth
-twigs and trunks of the trees before them.
-
-Vane was silently wondering what Miss Thomas could mean. He became
-strangely self-possessed and cautious, and it occurred to him that this
-was the sort of clear-sightedness a man would have who was gambling
-and playing for a very large amount. He thought to himself that this
-was just the way fellows usually got married. Vane had been brought up
-to suppose that the proper way to reach a young lady's heart, or at
-least her hand, was through the judgment of her parents; but, somehow,
-this did not seem to be necessary in New York, certainly not with Miss
-Thomas; and he felt that there was a danger of his asking Miss Thomas,
-to-night, to become Mrs. Vane. And, after all, he felt to-night that it
-was by no means certain that he wished Mrs. Vane to have been Miss Baby
-Thomas.
-
-The long silence became embarrassing, but Vane did not quite know what
-to say, and Miss Thomas had apparently no desire to say anything. The
-path they were in led up to a low stone wall in a sort of clearing on
-the side of the hill, with a distant view of the Hudson. Vane assisted
-Miss Thomas over the wall, and then, getting over it himself, sat down
-upon it. The girl sat down beside him. Both looked at the river.
-
-"What did you have to say to me?" said Vane, at last.
-
-"I wished to tell you that I had forgiven your question," Miss Thomas
-answered in a low, quiet voice, looking away from him across the water.
-
-"Entirely?"
-
-"Entirely, from the heart."
-
-Vane certainly did have a thrill of pleasurable excitement at this
-speech. It was the sort of glow, the tingling feeling about the waist
-he had felt when about to mount a strange horse whose temper he had
-not tested. He looked at the girl. She was half sitting, half leaning,
-against the wall. Her flowing dress had caught the sheen of the moon,
-and the white figure shone brightly against the dark leaves. She might
-have been a naiad or a wood-nymph, and yet there was a subtle feminine
-presence about her. With some girls you can associate on terms of
-fellowship, make companions of them, perhaps even sit on the fence in
-the moonlight and talk to them amicably, as to another man. But you
-could never forget that Miss Thomas was a woman.
-
-"I was really very much hurt," she said, "and I think you ought to have
-begged my pardon."
-
-"I did," said Vane, "and I told you I had the best possible excuse."
-
-"But you never told me what the excuse was." The young man sat on a
-lower stone than hers, and, as he looked up to her, the radiance fell
-full upon her face, and he saw the moon reflected in her eyes.
-
-Why should he doubt this girl? Had he not been deeply in love with her?
-And, after all, had she not borne herself, in all their relations,
-as he would have wished her to, as he would have wished her to be,
-supposing that she cared for him? She had often been right in being
-offended with him, but she was too gentle to be long angry--she was
-lovely in forgiving. Had he not plainly let her know what should be the
-signal for him to declare his love? Was not this as much encouragement
-as any woman would give? Strangely enough, now that he was sure of her
-he almost doubted of himself.
-
-"Do you really ask me to tell you of my excuse?" said Vane, and he felt
-a little ashamed of himself for the prevaricating question. "Do you not
-know?"
-
-Miss Thomas said nothing, but made a slight motion of her dress. Vane
-bit his lip, and felt that this was cowardly. The moon had gone into
-a cloud, but he fancied, from the position of her head, that she was
-looking at him with her large eyes. Her dress seemed to have a light of
-its own, which made her form still visible in the darkness. Suddenly he
-pictured to himself the way his conduct would look to her if she really
-cared for him, and he felt sure that she did, and he knew that she
-attracted him more than any woman he had ever met.
-
-"Because I love you, Winifred," said Vane, and he laid his hand on hers.
-
-"Oh--h," sighed the girl with a sort of shudder, as if he had given her
-pain, "I am so sorry." Vane caught his breath. "Oh, I am so sorry!"
-Vane pressed her little hand convulsively. "Oh, I never thought it was
-this. Why did you tell me? Why did you not leave it unsaid? Now I shall
-lose you for always." Her voice broke in a sob.
-
-"Do you mean that you will not marry me? Do you mean that you do not
-love me? You must know how I have loved you." Vane covered her hand
-with kisses. Miss Thomas seemed to be unconscious of this, but went on
-in a sort of cry, asking him to forgive her. "Do you mean that there is
-no hope?" said he, gravely.
-
-"Oh, no! none. You know how much I like you, but I can never marry
-you. You will forget all this, will you not?" There was a long silence
-between them, but her hand still lay in his. Meantime the sky had grown
-black in front of them. Vane was straining his eyes to see her face.
-There was a flash of lightning, and he saw that her cheek was wet with
-tears. Some large drops of rain came pattering down among the leaves.
-
-"We must hurry back," said Vane suddenly, dropping her hand. She rose
-silently and followed him along the path. In a few moments they got
-back to the place of supper. They were the first to arrive, but in a
-moment they heard voices in the shrubbery.
-
-"You will try and forget this evening, will you not?" said Miss Thomas,
-hurriedly. "Try and be as if it had never happened. And oh, tell me,
-are you very unhappy?"
-
-"I am very sorry," said he, "but I am going to-morrow to France."
-Miss Thomas made a movement of surprise, but there was no time for
-more to be said, as the thunderstorm was really upon them, and every
-one was hastening to the river. On the boat Vane found Miss Thomas a
-seat, and then went alone to the bow. He was very unhappy. He had not
-fancied that he would be so unhappy. He was very much disappointed,
-and, perhaps, a little angry. Coming up from the wharf in New York he
-was, as a matter of course, put in the same carriage with Miss Thomas.
-There were two other people with them, and Vane endeavored to act light
-comedy, but was not well seconded by the girl herself, who was silent
-and very pale. They went to Mrs. Gower's house for supper, but all the
-women were wet, and most of the men ill-tempered, and the party broke
-up early. Vane took his leave at once, and went back to his lodgings
-to finish his packing for the voyage. As soon as he had done he went
-immediately to bed and fell asleep late in the night, having as a
-latest waking thought the consciousness that he had for many months
-been making a fool of himself.
-
-
-
-
-XVI.
-
-
-THIS was still the most marked flavor in his self-consciousness the
-next morning, and when he rode to the wharf, when he entered the cabin
-decked with flowers as if for a funeral, even when they steamed out
-to sea, the bitter aftertaste of folly did not leave him. He was in
-the mid-Atlantic before his self-communings began to be mitigated
-by his sense of humor. Truly there had been no need to consider
-quite so nicely his duties to Miss Thomas. He had thought himself
-too far involved to retreat gracefully without a proposal. He had
-felt compelled to precipitate matters. He had feared to wound her
-deeply otherwise, though conscious, at the time, that his offer was
-rather magnanimous than passionate. He had had a continual fear of
-compromising her, too old-fashioned a reverence for woman, too European
-a sense of honor. He had done her too much honor. Apparently she had
-not considered him in so serious a light, this American.
-
-That he had been a most unconscionable ass Vane knew very well. This
-conviction, however, is a sentiment we can easily bear while it is
-unshared by others, and, fortunately, none of Vane's friends were so
-clearly convinced of it. None of his friends knew much about this
-affair.
-
-After all, he had almost given a sigh of relief when the welcome words
-of freedom came to her lips. He was well out of it. It had been a very
-sharp little skirmish, and he was not sorry that he had escaped in
-good order, heart and honor whole. At this point Vane again appeared
-to himself as an ass, but he only smiled at the apparition. Fortunate
-affairs those, which vanish with a laugh! So he dismissed the matter
-from his mind.
-
-When Vane landed at Havre the whole thing seemed like a dream. There
-was the familiar chalk cliff and the wide estuary, and the people
-seated on little, iron, painted chairs, in the cafés, reading _Figaro_,
-just as he had left them, with nothing changed but the date in the
-newspaper. A certain flippancy lurks in the sky of France, or was the
-flippancy _là-bas_ in America? Vane was not quite sure.
-
-He had had no letter from the doctor since that first one received
-in New York. Indeed there had been no way for one to have reached
-him before his arrival in Havre, and he was not sure that the doctor
-knew in which steamer he was crossing. But Vane was anxious to get to
-Rennes. Instead of going up one side of the river and down the other
-by rail, he decided to make a cut across the country, so he took the
-ferry for Trouville. The place was full of people--people such as you
-find anywhere, people such as you might see in Newport or New York--and
-Vane hastened to leave it. He found a diligence driven by an old man
-in a blue blouse, that took the country people and their eggs and
-chickens to and from the market at Trouville, and retained a seat on
-the outside. They left the watering-place at sunset, and, after driving
-a few miles along the beach--the fashionable drive--by the painted
-pavilions and villas, they struck inland through the grass uplands
-still fragrant with the hay.
-
-I do not want to make anything tragic of Vane's arrival at Rennes. It
-was hardly that to him. He had taken the midnight mail from Caen after
-a six hours' journey in the sweet July evening; and when he arrived in
-Rennes in the morning his mother was dead and had been buried, and the
-priests in the great cathedral, even then, were saying masses for her
-soul. The old physician, like few physicians, but like all old Bretons,
-was an ardent Catholic, and had sought to secure to his patient one
-surreptitious chance of salvation before his heretic friend arrived.
-"Yes, my son," said he, "at the last she died, _tout doucement_, it is
-now three weeks. She never recovered herself, though I had the abbé
-with her and the Presence by her side. She never knew you or me, thou
-dost remember, and at the end she died silently, and spoke not at all.
-Ah! mon pauvre ami, quelle sainte femme!" cried the doctor, forgetting
-that he had never known Mrs. Vane in her right mind.
-
-The masses, thought Vane, would do no harm, and he stayed two or three
-weeks with Dr. Kérouec in his old house near Rennes.
-
-The doctor, though growing old, was very busy. He had numberless
-charitable meetings in the afternoons, and his practice took up the
-mornings. His evenings were usually passed with Vane and the abbé over
-tric-trac and boston. The doctor was the head of many benevolent clubs,
-"Sociétés de Consommation," and such like. He knew to a unit how many
-poor people had consumed the society's soup, for each of the past forty
-years, in Rennes, and seemed to derive much satisfaction from these
-figures and their annual increase. He never spoke again to Vane of the
-young lady with the dot, and it turned out that she had married M. le
-Vicomte's son.
-
-Meantime Vane wandered through the rosy lanes, and the country came to
-him with a sense of rest. Life's silent woods are so near its highways,
-after all! And Vane had been a boy in this country, and it had a
-glamour for him; and, truly, it is a sweet corner in the world. He had
-gone out of it into all that was great and new, and now he came back to
-it, like a foot-worn pilgrim, with nothing but his staff and scrip. And
-as he thought this, he was passing a great army of the peasantry, not
-all peasantry, for many a lady, too, was walking amid the wooden shoes.
-Before the long procession, among the crucifixes, was carried the
-ermine banner of Queen Anne. It was the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes.
-He looked after them curiously, so earnestly they marched, chanting
-their simple aves and their litanies to St. Anne of Auray. But they
-did not walk to Gascony, but only to the railway, whence they went by
-special train.
-
-Vane did not feel deeply his mother's death. Indeed it hardly seemed
-that she could have died so lately; it was rather as if she had
-been dead many years. All the old seemed to have faded away out of
-his life, and everything new was rather unreal. As for Baby Thomas,
-she was either forgotten completely or dismissed with a slighting
-half-memory. The older love was as much in his mind and its ghost
-was as real a figure as this memory of yesterday. He walked over to
-Monrepos one afternoon when the doctor had a meeting at his house.
-The place was rented by an English family, and some stout girls were
-playing lawn tennis, while a comely youth, lying lazily on the grass,
-looked on critically over a short pipe. Vane sat on the walk and
-began to poke pebbles with his stick again. He had succeeded; and the
-result was emptiness. Why could not this poor sordid success have come
-sooner,--and his father, and so his mother, might have been alive
-to-day.
-
-
-
-
-XVII.
-
-
-WHEN he got home (Dr. Kérouec's house he called _home_) he found two
-American letters. One was a business letter, but on the other he
-recognized the familiar delicate angles of Miss Thomas's writing. He
-was displeased at this. The note was like some petty daily duty busying
-one in an hour of insight--like the call of the prompter in some stupid
-play. It changed all, even to the language of his thought. What the
-deuce can she have to say in a letter? he said to himself. He thought
-he had done with her.
-
-It was characteristic of the man that he opened the business letter
-first. It was from his partner, who was growing old and more and more
-reliant on Vane's judgment, and it contained an offer of a quarter of a
-million from Welsh for their interest in the Bellefontaine and Pacific
-Railway. Nearly every village in the Western States has a Pacific
-railway, but comparatively few have reached the Pacific. Most of them
-run vaguely in a westerly direction for a hundred miles or so, and are
-managed by an agent of the bondholders. But the Bellefontaine P. R.
-was parallel to another Pacific road, which had at last been put on a
-successful basis by Welsh, the railroad king; and Welsh, who had sold
-all his own stock in the successful road, of which he was president,
-and who had further agreed to sell considerably more stock than he
-owned, was now desirous of finishing the Bellefontaine and Pacific,
-and running it in competition with his own road. Vane wrote a telegram
-advising his partner to demand half a million for their interest in the
-Bellefontaine Pacific; and then he opened Miss Thomas's letter. Cinerea
-Lake, June 25, 187-, it was dated. Now, where and what, thought Vane,
-is Cinerea?
-
-   "My dear Mr. Vane," it ran on, "I think of you all the day, and often
-   cannot sleep at night. What can you think of me? If I could only see
-   you, and feel that you would understand me; how unhappy you have
-   made me by what you told me the other evening! I wish now that I had
-   not told you of my forgiveness, although I had fully forgiven you in
-   my heart. I wish I had not spoken it, and then our friendship would
-   not have been broken. I feel now that you cannot think of me as your
-   friend; that you believe I have been intentionally cruel and unkind
-   to you. Why _did_ you tell me?
-
-   "I may be doing wrong, wrong again, in writing to you. I want so much
-   to ask you to come to see me--you will come, won't you? when you come
-   back?
-
-                                       "W. T. Sunday night."
-
-"Pish!" said Vane, and he crumpled up the letter in his pocket and went
-to walk, in the late afternoon. Returning, the doctor passed him in a
-carriage with footmen, and he met him on the threshold of his house
-with an invitation to visit at Monrepos. The people who had taken the
-place were friends of the Greshams, and had known Mrs. Vane. Of course,
-Vane could not go; but the question gave the needed fillip to his
-action. He must do something; he must go somewhere. It is the nature of
-man to go somewhere.
-
-So Vane went to many places that summer. It is customary in romances
-for men thus wandering to be haunted by the thought of something. Vane
-was haunted by the thought of nothing. He did not even think of Miss
-Thomas, or, if he thought of her, it was to think that he thought
-nothing of her; it is nearly the same thing. He began by going to
-Biarritz and Lourdes, in the path of the pilgrims. At Lourdes there
-is a modern, ugly church upon a hill, with modern, manufactured glass
-within; the grotto is underneath, surrounded always by hundreds of
-pilgrims--many bedridden, some dying. The figure of the Virgin is robed
-in a white gown, with a blue silk wrapper and a golden crown. You
-may buy small replicas of it in the shops. Vane was duly shocked, as
-becomes a Protestant. But one thing he liked in Lourdes--an expression
-he heard used by an old priest in defending the miracle. It was, he
-said, an example of the divine foolishness of the ways of God--the
-Virgin's appearance to a simple child. Vane fancied that there might be
-follies that had something in them of divine and much good sense that
-smacked only of the world and the flesh. One got plenty of good sense
-in New York.
-
-When he left Lourdes he went eastward, through Gascony and Languedoc.
-The sweet contentment of the harvest was over the country, the healthy
-happiness of nature's reproduction, of fruitage and of growing seed.
-All earth and nature is happy where it is not conscious. There was a
-mighty harvest that year, and all the people of the country were busied
-with it, getting themselves their daily bread, delivered, for the time,
-from evil.
-
-In the south of France there are wide plains and cornfields, and in
-them is more than one great dead city, sleeping like some old warrior
-in the peaceful afternoon of his days. The huge armor of cyclopean
-walls has served its time, but still stands out, frowning, from the
-sea of yellow grain; the city inside has shrunk within the walls, and
-no longer fills them. Such a place is Aigues Mortes or Carcassonne;
-nestling in the arms of fortresses, quiet and still, as if protected
-by them and lulled to sleep. Stern in semblance as these walls may be,
-they are pasteboard, like Don Quixote's helmet; they date from less
-noisy days than ours; the mortarless masonry would rattle to the ground
-at the sound of cannon. However, they have been of use in older days,
-and it is pleasant, even now, to wander in the summer by the shadow of
-the walls and look out upon the farms and the green things growing.
-
-When a New Yorker enters these places, though, their atmosphere
-is something deathlike to him. This merely vegetable growth, this
-life of the market-day and harvest, is deathly dull; and the place
-itself, as the phrase is, dead and alive. Possibly, our fabulous New
-Yorker visiting these places (if he visits them we must make him
-fabulous)--possibly, he may find things to admire in them; and the
-first day, he smokes his cigar on the battlements and gets along well
-enough. But towards the afternoon of the second--when he has had his
-morning drive, and his daughter has brought home her water-color--a
-terrible pall of silence, a stealthy, dread ennui comes over him. Ten
-to one but he flies by the night express to the nearest city with an
-evening paper--Marseilles, let us say, or Nice. And there, the daughter
-finds a band in the Promenade des Anglais, and her water-color remains
-unfinished.
-
-Vane was conscious of some of this; he had been long enough in New York
-for that. There was little here to interest an American. But still, it
-was pleasant; and life was made so simple an affair! and its outside
-was so sweet. How much more life promised to one in America! He did not
-distrust the promise; but a question is the first shade of doubt. And
-it really seemed, sometimes, as if, in ceasing to oppress one another,
-men had forgotten how to make each other happy.
-
-There is much beauty to be found in the South of France; with a
-something grander, more venerable, in these old moulds of life than one
-can expect among discordant sects and syncretisms. Vane enjoyed his
-summer to the full, and drank in the sunlight like a wine, forgetting
-that he was alone. And the people seemed so full and sound; with
-qualities of their own, and self-supporting lives; not characters that
-they assumed, or tried to make other people give them; nor with natures
-colorless, flavorless, save for some spirit of a poor ambition.
-
-I do not know what Vane had in his mind when this last thought so
-struggled for expression. He was not ill-natured, nor yet excessively
-captious. I suppose he was a little disappointed with his own country.
-At all events, he soon forgot America that summer. And, after all, he
-had seen but one unit, and there are more than fifty millions of them.
-Nor, perhaps, did he yet know Miss Thomas--the unit whom he had known
-best.
-
-
-
-
-XVIII.
-
-
-IN his life, Henry Vane had hitherto been prospecting. He had sunk
-several shafts deep into it, and had worked them honestly, but he
-had not had very much success. He had struck gold; but he had not
-struck much of anything else; and gold had now ceased to be of the
-first importance. The prime solution of the difficulty had only been
-postponed, in Brittany, that day five years before; it had not been
-met. The demands of a human life had never been liquidated; they had
-been funded, temporarily; and now the note was falling due. He, also,
-had been getting his daily bread, and had been delivered from evil.
-
-But now the old question kept recurring, and the sphinx would have an
-answer. The premature harvest was over (he was in Spain), forced into
-sooner ripeness by those passionate skies; all the country was burned,
-the herbage gone, the hot earth cracked and ravined. Only the yellow
-oranges were yet to come, that ripened for the winter; and the orange
-groves still gave some verdure to the hills, contrasting with the sober
-skies. Along the ridge by the Mediterranean was a file of graceful palm
-trees, swinging their languid arms above the sea.
-
-Vane had come along the coast as far as Tarragona; and he was lying
-in the shadow of the lovely hill of Monserrat, thinking. He had been
-reading his letters again; and was seeking to come to some resolve.
-Nobody in the world had any claim upon his action now, save only the
-old doctor at Rennes. Vane had promised him a visit every summer.
-
-He had now no great duty in America; but still, he felt that he
-must soon be going back. For good or evil, his path lay there. And
-after all, this island in an eddy of the world, this shore of the
-Mediterranean, facing backward to the East--it was idle staying here.
-He smiled to himself as he thought of his own older thoughts, when he
-had melodramatically planned for a war or some forlorn hope in African
-discovery. There is something half shameful, half sad, in seeing one's
-own older folly, one's boyish vanity and egotism. He had the necessary
-money now, but there was no longer anything attractive to him in the
-life of Paris; even dreams of adventure in the Soudan did not now fire
-his imagination. Vane had learned that no American could do without
-America, least of all an American with nothing but his country left.
-What was he doing on this shelvage of a bounded sea? this stage setting
-for past dramas, where the play was over and the lights turned out. And
-Vane thought to himself of Bellefontaine, Ohio, and the great future
-of the West, and eager Wall Street. The phrases rolled off glibly,
-like a well-taught lesson. Still, their being trite did not prevent
-their being true. Surely there was something real, something actual,
-progressive in America, to make one's life worth living there. His own
-country aroused his interest, was worth his study. As for the trivial
-girl with whom he had flirted--by whom he had been corrupted--he had
-wasted his time over her. When he went back he would go farther abroad.
-
-And return he must. He was wanted in America. The--the affairs of his
-bank required his presence. His old partner, by this time, was probably
-wild with irritation and amazement at his prolonged absence; and there
-would be heaps of letters awaiting him at Seville; a _crescendo_ of
-increasing urgency, ending with daily telegrams. Then there was the
-sale of the railway. If successful, it meant an assured fortune, to him
-and his heirs, if he had any. And an assured fortune is like a license,
-a ticket-of-leave to mould your future as you will. Vane spent much
-time in endeavoring to make this motive sufficient unto himself.
-
-He took steamer at Valencia and sailed out, westward, between the
-Pillars of Hercules. After all, this was more than Ulysses had ever
-dared do, and Ulysses was a hero of epic. Moreover, like any Irish
-emigrant, Ulysses had believed in the blessed Western isles. But then
-Ulysses had been in search of a home; he, Vane, was only in search of a
-fortune.
-
-The steamer touched at Cadiz for several days; and there Vane went
-ashore and ran up to Seville, by rail, to get his letters. There was no
-other letter from Miss Thomas. Then he went to Granada, and wandered
-for an evening through the Alhambra.
-
-He had got his New York papers at Seville, and he spent half an hour or
-more looking over the stock quotations, on a hill near the Generalife.
-Stocks seemed to be higher than ever; he had made still more money.
-While he was doing this he heard the tinkling of a zither or guitar,
-and, looking down, he saw that the sound proceeded from the courtyard
-of what was, apparently, a little inn or venta.
-
-The broad Vega lay smiling beneath him, stretching green and fertile
-to the last low hill from which the banished Moor had looked back upon
-Granada; while around him, in every street and alley, was the tinkle of
-the waters, still rushing from their source in the snows through the
-Moor's aqueducts, which kept his memory green with the verdure of the
-one green spot in Spain. Far above, to the left of Vane as he sat, were
-the pale snows of the Sierra Nevada, amber or ashen in the brown air of
-evening. The short work of the Spanish day was over; the strumming of
-guitars was multiplied in the stillness; and, looking down again, Vane
-even saw a girl dancing in the little inn yard.
-
-There was no other spectator but a swarthy man in black--her lover,
-probably--with a gray hat, and a black scarf about his waist. He was
-playing on the zither, and the girl began to sing some strange Spanish
-air with long, chromatic cadences, and a wild, unusual rhythm.
-
-They did not know that he was looking on; and the girl went on with her
-dance, which no one else seemed to notice but the lover, who struck
-his hands together, now and then, in applause or to mark the rhythm.
-Vane watched with interest. It was curious to think that she was really
-dancing, dancing and singing, and neither of them was paid for it.
-
-Vane landed in New York about the first of September.
-
-
-
-
-XIX.
-
-
-HE went to the bank, and found that nothing more had been heard from
-Welsh. There was nothing doing; even his partner was out of town. The
-city was empty. Vane's first act was to send to Doctor Kérouec a sum
-sufficient to endow liberally and for all time all the _sociétés de
-consommation_ that there were in Rennes. It did not cost much; and the
-money was thriftily invested by the doctor, with a most gratifying
-increase in the annual statistics of soup. This he quarterly reported
-to his young friend with as much satisfaction as if the statistics were
-of souls saved for heaven; but there was a note of sadness now in the
-old doctor's letters which had not been noticeable before.
-
-The city was a mass of undistinguished humanity. Vane rather liked
-this; and found much satisfaction in going to Coney Island and similar
-places where the people asserted themselves with frankness and
-sincerity. One's fellow-man is always interesting, when not factitious.
-
-But after a very few weeks of New York, he wearied of it. He could not
-bring himself to take so much interest in his business, now that it
-was so very successful. The labor did not seem to him so healthy, so
-satisfying as of old; it could hardly be termed his daily bread, even
-by a stretch of metaphor. Moreover, one's daily bread is got for one
-by wholesale in America; machine-raised, by the thousand bushels, in
-Minnesota, and brought ready to hand for the million, like the other
-raw materials of life.
-
-Vane was tired of the raw material of life--he felt a want for
-something that was not ground out by the wholesale. But the only
-finished product he had yet seen was Miss Winifred Thomas. She was a
-product of the city--perhaps he ought to go further afield. Wemyss had
-once said that people only got the means of living in New York. They
-went elsewhere to live.
-
-And the young man was anxious, above all things, to live, to find in
-life what was earnest and genuine: not the mere means, like money, nor
-the makeshifts, like fashion. Vane wanted happiness, not pleasure; like
-most young men, he felt injured if he did not get it.
-
-It may have been this craving for humanity that made the city
-unendurable to him, or it may have been the heat, which, late in
-September, was most intense. Whatever it was, he felt restless and
-uneasy in the city, and cast about him where he could best go for
-seclusion and fresh air. Some acquaintance suggested Cinerea Lake.
-It was at that time crowded with people, which would make seclusion
-easy; and it was a "popular summer resort," which, he thought, would
-be a novelty to him, coming from Carcassonne and the monasteries of
-Monserrat. Moreover, Cinerea was one of the places in America which
-people visited solely in search of happiness.
-
-Cinerea Lake was formerly known as Butternut Pond; it belonged to a
-Mr. Sabin; and the village was Sabin's simply. But the pond is really
-a lake, and it lies near a spur of the Appalachian Mountains. The
-place had originally been marked by a farmhouse only, to which some
-popular preacher had betaken himself for the summer months. In an
-evil moment he had come back, one autumn, and written a book about
-the delights of the hills; the delights that he found in the hills.
-In the next year seven-eighths of the ladies in his parish, and their
-friends, had settled upon the country, in search, they too, of the
-delights of the hills; they occupied the farmhouses within a radius of
-several miles, and crocheted. The year after that had witnessed, at
-only a few weeks' interval, the foundation and the completion of the
-Butternut Grand Hotel. And now the place was beginning to be known to
-that world which calls itself _society_, and which the rest of society
-calls fashionable. Little of all this was known to Vane, however. He
-understood that it was cool and crowded, and thither he accordingly
-went.
-
-Vane had his days of self-gratulation, like another; and it was in
-one of them that he left town for his vacation. He felt that soon a
-fortune, and a large one, would be assured him. He was an independent
-and successful citizen of America, with all his country before him,
-and the chances in his favor. He had lately seen something of a friend
-or two also in town for the summer; and had had an occasional little
-dinner with John or some other man, in the club, or by the sea; Vane
-was sociable enough, though not gregarious, and he felt rich in
-acquaintances with half a dozen or so. They were most of them still in
-the city; and Vane felt a sense of freedom, of adventure, as he left
-it, which became stronger every moment as the train flew northward. But
-the journey was one of many hours, and it was late in the twilight of
-the next afternoon before he alighted at Cinerea Lake--called Cinerea
-by the ladies who had looked in the lexicon to christen it anew.
-
-
-
-
-XX.
-
-
-THE Butternut Grand Hotel was large and white; with a hundred windows,
-all of the same size, equidistant, and in four parallel rows. Had any
-one of them been unfinished, like the window in Aladdin's tower, it
-need not have so remained; with a few hours' work any joiner could have
-evened it up with the rest. A huge verandah surrounded the structure,
-roofed above the second story; and up and down the painted floor of
-this verandah a score of pairs of young ladies promenaded. Young ladies
-they were called in the society columns of the summer Sunday papers;
-speaking colloquially, one might have called them girls. Vane's black
-suit was dusty, and in his travel-stained condition it was embarrassing
-to be the object of young feminine eyes; but as most of them stopped
-their walk to observe his entrance, there was nothing for it but to
-cast his own eyes down, and walk modestly through the line. It was a
-worse gantlet than the Calais pier. Vane went to the office to ask for
-his room; but it was some minutes before the clerk, who was talking
-with another gentleman, could give him his attention. When he did so he
-scanned Vane rudely before replying, and at last, as he opened his lips
-to answer, two of the young ladies from the piazza rushed in to ask
-for their mail, and, pushing Vane slightly aside, engaged the clerk's
-attention. "Now, Mr. Hitchcock, you don't mean to tell me you have no
-letters for _me_?" said one. The other looked at Vane while she spoke,
-as, indeed, did the speaker.
-
-When the clerk began sorting the heap of letters which had just come in
-the coach, Vane acquired the flattering conviction that the mail was
-but a pretext, and himself the cause.
-
-"There are none, indeed, Miss Morse," said the clerk; and the girls
-fluttered gaily out. "I'll write you one myself, if you'll wait," added
-the clerk jocosely. But the only reply to this was a Parthian glance
-from Miss Morse, which embraced Vane in its orbit. The clerk looked
-after them with a smile, and then, after meditating a moment, turned to
-Vane.
-
-"Now, what can I do for you, sir?"
-
-"I believe I engaged a room."
-
-"What name?"
-
-"Vane."
-
-"Three twelve," said the clerk, and turned back to his first
-interlocutor, who had been standing silent in the meantime, chewing a
-toothpick and regarding the opposite wall.
-
-Vane's chamber was a long and narrow room shaped like a pigeon-hole in
-a desk. A ventilating window was above the door, and a single window
-opposite, uncurtained, looking out upon a long, monotonous slope of
-mountain, which was clothed shabbily in a wood of short firs. The sides
-and roof of the room were of coarse plaster; a red carpet was upon the
-floor. Some delay was caused by Vane's ringing for a bath, and still
-further delay by the waitress in obtaining the information that he
-could not have one unless he gave notice the day before. While Vane
-was waiting for all this he heard the door of the next room open, and
-the distinctness of the feminine voices bore testimony to the thinness
-of the walls. There were seemingly two young ladies there, but their
-conversation was interrupted by a gong, which, as one of the voices
-informed him, was the gong for supper. A consequent scuffle took place,
-and this was only ended by the final bang of the door that announced
-the departure of his neighbors.
-
-Vane followed their example, and entered a long dining-hall in which
-two rows of tables, eighteen in each row, were disposed transversely;
-there were eighteen seats at every table, many of which were already
-occupied. After waiting a minute at the door he was shown to a seat
-next a Jewish family and several young men--evidently a sort of omnibus
-table, to which the negro waiters, with a nice social discrimination,
-ushered solitary males. Possibly for this reason, they were not well
-served. The table was covered with little oval dishes of coarse
-stoneware containing dip-toast, fried potatoes, and slices of cold
-meat. Steaks and omelets were announced in a printed bill of fare, and
-tea and coffee. Vane was unable to interest himself in his companions,
-and watched the people coming in. Most of the elderly ladies and some
-of the young girls wore large solitaire diamonds, and bore down, as if
-under full sail, through the broad aisle, with elaborate assumption of
-indifference and social dignity. It was evident that, to many of them,
-the people who were seated at these tables represented the World. The
-men looked more respectable, but even more out of place; and the girls,
-of whom many were pretty, came tripping in by twos, with infinite
-variety of gait and action. Vane noticed that Miss Morse and her friend
-had changed their dresses. They did not look at him. Miss Morse's
-friend had a novel in her hand which she read during the meal.
-
-After supper Vane walked up and down the verandah. Most of the girls
-did the same, still in couples. Despite the cool mountain air, many
-of them wore low-throated muslin dresses. Vane's quasi-acquaintance,
-Miss Morse, was not among them; but about nine in the evening a figure
-came out of a side-door in front of him, in a sort of summer evening
-ball dress, and stood a moment by the piazza railing, pensively looking
-at the stars. As Vane passed by he saw that it was Miss Morse, and he
-could not help wondering whether she expected him to speak to her. As
-he passed the windows of the large dining-hall brilliantly lighted with
-gas, he saw that they were dancing inside. A few instruments were in
-one corner, and perhaps half a dozen couples waltzing on the floor.
-Some young men were there in evening dress, but not enough to go round,
-and many of the girls were dancing with each other. Vane had to admit
-that most of them danced very gracefully and well. After a moment, Miss
-Morse came in. She had apparently some pretensions, for she sank into
-an arm-chair in one corner of the room, and refused to dance. There was
-a sort of master of ceremonies in the person of a sallow and thin but
-dapper young gentleman who had all the affable address of a popular
-lady's salesman, and Vane saw him present several young men to Miss
-Morse. All this became at last somewhat tiresome, and, feeling lonely,
-Vane went to bed.
-
-He had almost got to sleep when he was aroused by the voices of his
-feminine neighbors. "Well, I think he's perfectly horrid," said one.
-"No," said another, "he ain't much of an addition. I told father I must
-have two new ball dresses, because I was coming here for the society. I
-had to tease him for them for a month, and now, I declare, I might just
-as well have stayed in the city all summer. Come and undo this, will
-you, please?"
-
-"Sh!" said the other voice, "how do you know there isn't some one next
-door?" A silence followed, interrupted by bursts of stifled laughter.
-
-"Well, I don't care," said the first voice. "There wasn't any one
-there yesterday, anyhow. Did you see how he was dressed? Nothing but a
-common, rough suit."
-
-"Oh, don't you like that? Why, I call that real distinguished."
-
-"Well, anyhow, I don't see why he couldn't get introduced. I call
-it simply rude, Englishman or no Englishman." At this point the
-unfortunate stranger seemed finally disposed of, and Vane went to sleep.
-
-
-
-
-XXI.
-
-
-THERE is one long road at Cinerea Lake, always dusty, with a sidewalk
-of planks. The hotel, with the appendant cottages, is on the one
-side, and a few old farmhouses, now boarding-houses, with a dozen
-little wooden shops, are on the other. Most of the shops sell novels,
-sweetmeats, embroidery work, and newspapers. There were not many men
-at Cinerea. It is not customary in America for men to join their wives
-and children on pleasure excursions. What few men there were seemed
-oppressed by the novelty of the position, and sat in chairs upon the
-piazza, with their feet upon the railing. They seldom ventured farther
-during the day. There was a stock telegraph instrument in the hall of
-the hotel, and an enterprising New York broker had an office in an
-ante-room. Vane noticed that every one of these gentlemen left their
-foot-rests on the verandah shortly after breakfast, and, following them
-to the nearest store, he learned that this activity was caused by a
-desire to purchase the evening papers of the day before, which arrived,
-as a written placard informed him, at 9.45 A.M. Vane himself asked for
-a paper, but got no answer from the young woman behind the counter,
-while a friend who was sitting with her, working, and eating pieces
-of chocolate from a paper bag upon her lap, stopped her embroidery a
-moment to stare at him rudely. Suddenly it dawned upon Vane that he
-had seen the faces of these two ladies at his hotel. They were sitting
-on a little piazza in front of the shop, behind a small counter, but
-the shop itself seemed to be a sort of club-room for the ladies of the
-place, and these were evidently guests. Vane apologized for his error
-with some inward amusement, but his speech was rewarded with a still
-blanker stare from the young woman with the chocolate.
-
-So far, this "popular summer resort" promised more errors than
-entertainment. Vane had certainly never felt so lonely before as among
-this gay company. Work gives its own companionship, but idleness is
-gregarious. The place was full of girls of all styles of behavior and
-prettiness. Some were playing tennis, others making up companies for
-drives, others starting off for long walks. Vane had pictured the type
-of American girlhood as something fragile and delicate, but these had
-healthy faces and lithe young figures robed in flannel and untrammelled
-by the dressmakers' art. They were bright, quick with their eyes, but
-far from ethereal. Vane himself went to walk, and, after following the
-road for a mile or so, entered a woody path, which, as a finger-post
-assured him, led to Diana's baths.
-
-He felt much in the mood for a meeting with a heathen goddess, and
-entered the forest accordingly. But he found nothing nearer Diana than
-Miss Morse and her friend, who were sitting reading with two young
-men. The path seemed to vanish where they sat, and Vane made hold to
-stop and ask one of the young men the way. They were slow of speech,
-and Miss Morse herself replied. She assured him that he was at his
-destination, and Vane found himself, in a moment, in conversation with
-her.
-
-Diana's Baths were formed by a small brook trickling over some mossy
-rocks and making a few pools in which Diana might possibly have wet her
-feet. Vane made this suggestion, which was received with much laughter,
-at the end of which he found himself on such a footing of intimacy that
-he was being introduced to Miss Morse's companions: "Miss Westerhouse,
-may I introduce Mr.---- Mr.----" "Vane," suggested he. "Mr. Vane,
-of New York, Miss Morse. Miss Westerhouse, Mr. Vane. Mr. Vane, Mr.
-Thomson and Mr. Dibble." The young men nodded rather awkwardly. Miss
-Westerhouse made a place on the rock beside her, and Vane sat down
-wondering how the situation would be explained, and who had told her
-that he came from New York.
-
-"I met you yesterday on your arrival, did I not?" Miss Morse went on.
-
-Vane admitted that she had, and remembered the scene with the hotel
-clerk.
-
-"Coming from New York, I fear you will find Cinerea Lake rather dull.
-We are after the season, you know."
-
-He hastened to assure her that he had found the place most attractive.
-
-"It is getting to be rather too well known now, but it is pretty,
-though not so nice as it was. You meet all sorts of people here
-already."
-
-Vane felt duly instructed as to the social position of his companions,
-and assented, with much honesty, to her last statement.
-
-"It is not very gay here, now. We have a hop twice a week."
-
-"That will be delightful," said Vane with enthusiasm.
-
-"Do you reside in New York?" Miss Westerhouse broke in.
-
-"As much as I do anywhere," said Vane. "I have to travel a great deal."
-Vane noticed a sudden lack of interest in him after this remark, and
-fancied that they set him down for a commercial traveler. "I have only
-lived in New York of late years, and then only when I am not----on the
-road," he added, as the humorous view of the situation struck him. A
-silence followed this remark, and a certain coldness; but Vane, who had
-a particularly comfortable place, leaning back on a mossy rock, made no
-motion to go. Finally Miss Westerhouse made an effort.
-
-"Then you are not much acquainted in New York."
-
-"I have a good many business acquaintances."
-
-"Oh, I mean your lady friends."
-
-"I have none," said Vane.
-
-"Some very pleasant New Yorkers have been here," said Miss Morse, "but
-they only stayed a few days. Mrs. Haviland and Miss Thomas----" Vane
-could not repress a slight movement. "Do you know them?" said the young
-lady with some interest.
-
-"Miss Winifred Thomas?"
-
-"This was Miss Baby----"
-
-"It is the same person," said Vane, with decision.
-
-"Is she not just too lovely?" broke in again Miss Westerhouse, with
-enthusiasm. Vane could not but concur in this sentiment. Miss Morse's
-interest in him seemed revived.
-
-"I suppose we must go back to dinner now," said she. "By the way, we
-are going to have a straw-ride this afternoon. Would you not like to
-come, Mr. Vane? The gentlemen are getting it up. Mr. Dibble, here, is
-chief manager----"
-
-Vane said he should be delighted, and they rose to go. Picking up
-two books and a bonbonnière which lay upon the grass, he followed
-Miss Morse. He looked at the books as he went, and uttered a slight
-ejaculation. One, to be sure, was _Lucile_, but the other was a volume
-of Prosper Mérimée's _Lettres à une Inconnue_.
-
-On the way back Vane was presented to several other young ladies, and
-when he finally entered the hotel piazza, it was in company with a Miss
-Parsons, of Brooklyn, who in turn presented him to a Miss Storrs, of
-Cleveland, and left them, as she unnecessarily explained, to dress for
-dinner.
-
-Vane was rather ashamed to own to himself that he was displeased at
-the acquaintance that seemed to have existed between Miss Thomas and
-his late companions. Little as he cared for Miss Thomas, there was
-certainly a world-wide difference between her and Miss Morse, Mr.
-Thomson and Mr. Dibble; and yet he could not bring himself to admit
-that he was snobbish or prejudiced. It was simply that the wealth
-and education of these young ladies had outstripped their breeding,
-while the young men were still seeking for the first. He pictured to
-himself Miss Thomas sitting in flannels at Diana's Baths, and going on
-straw-rides with Mr. Dibble, and the idea was distasteful to him.
-
-It was surely an odd chance that he should travel upon her wake in this
-way. Throughout the afternoon he occasionally caught himself wondering
-how she would appear in these surroundings. This thing was a mixture of
-Arcady and an American female college, with a touch of Vauxhall thrown
-in. And it was only six weeks since he had wandered in the moonlight
-of the Alhambra; and the harvest was hardly all gathered that had been
-ripening about the walls of Carcassonne. Vane wished that he could meet
-these people at home--that he could see their life really as it was.
-Was this, then, all? It could not be. There must be something more real
-behind it.
-
-Vane could fancy, in the days when he had been in love, himself and
-her living in that out-of-the-way corner in France, in that forgotten
-nook sheltered on the backward shores of Spain, eddied in the flood
-of modern life and civilization, where he had wandered in the pine
-woods upon Monserrat. But this place, this painted wooden hotel, this
-company, seemed more foreign to him than anything in the Old World.
-What was it? What was it that gave the strange character to it all? Was
-he, then, such a foreigner that he could not understand it? Was even
-his love exotic, that it seemed impossible here?
-
-The young man gave himself much mental trouble in getting at the
-secret of this American life. And, in the last analysis, it seemed
-unreal--unreal because it was temporary; because the old was going and
-the new had not yet come; because it was like the wooden houses and the
-temporary bridges, and the provisional social conventions, and the thin
-fashionable veneer of neo-conservatism--it was suffered to remain until
-the people found time and resolution to make a change.
-
-
-
-
-XXII.
-
-
-VANE, however, did not carry his analysis quite so far as this. He
-found that it was unreal; there he stopped; the why was too heavy a
-burden for him. He was ready and anxious enough to make it real; but
-still, all through his life, the substance of life itself had kept
-eluding him, and left the shadow in his hand.
-
-Many of the girls (at Cinerea every woman under thirty is a girl)--many
-of the girls were reading novels, American summer stories, written by
-girls about other girls, and revelling in the summer life of girls.
-Vane borrowed some of these and read them. They were so prettily
-written, so charming, so awfully true, he was told; and he liked not
-to confess that they gave him but a little passing amusement, which
-was followed by much mental depression. It was all true and real,
-then? Was Vane himself something of a prig? John Haviland did not
-think so. But these stories seemed to him more immoral, or at all
-events, more corrupting, than many a French romance ending in adultery.
-There was in them an ignorance of all that is highest in life, a
-calm, self-satisfied acceptance of a petty standard. The strength of
-crime implies the strength of virtue, but the negation of both is
-hopelessness. In defence of Vane, it might be said that he was really
-not in the mood for pleasure at this time.
-
-The straw-ride was unanimously declared to be a great success. Miss
-Morse brought her volume of Mérimée along and read it to her young man
-in the woods. Her young man for the afternoon, that is; she had no
-special young man. The chaperone was the beautiful Mrs. Miles Breeze,
-of Baltimore; she arrived suddenly, in the nick of time to go; and Vane
-could see that Miss Morse was much elated at being under the wing of
-so real a social personage. Ned Eddy was with her. When the company
-paired off and scattered in the woods, Vane fell to the lot of a Miss
-Gibbs, of Philadelphia, a still newer acquaintance to whom Miss Storrs
-had introduced him. Miss Gibbs had a volume of Rossetti's poems with
-her, and Vane read to her the "Last Confession" under the pine trees.
-For many a foreigner, it would have been his first. But the hearts of
-American young men are (very properly) bound in triple brass. Miss
-Gibbs also knew Miss Thomas. She seemed relieved when she gathered from
-Vane that Miss Storrs was an acquaintance of a few hours, and Misses
-Morse and Westerhouse of the morning only. Evidently, thought Vane,
-there were distinctions if not differences. Miss Gibbs combined much
-good-breeding with her fascinations; and a dangerous _savoir faire_.
-
-The next day he went to walk with a dark-haired girl in the morning,
-and to drive with a yellow-haired widow in the afternoon. In the
-evening he found himself drifting on the lake in a boat with Miss
-Gibbs. Any one of these beauties would have been termed, by a
-Frenchman, adorable; and probably he would have ventured to adore.
-Other boats with similar couples were scattered over the lake, no
-one too near another. As far as Vane could judge, it seemed to be
-considered the proper thing for every young man to simulate the
-deepest love for his companion of the hour. It was a sort of private
-theatrical, with the out-door night for a stage; a midsummer night's
-dream, of which the theme was _let's pretend we're lovers_. He was here
-alone with Miss Gibbs under circumstances which in France would have
-compelled him to marry her; and it was doubtful whether she would even
-remember him as an acquaintance, in the city, a few weeks later.
-
-He was glad to admit that there was something very creditable in the
-fact that the thing was possible. Still this trifling, this mild but
-continuous drugging of the affections, must have its demoralizing
-effect. It was part result and part cause of that same unreality. The
-only real thing about the hotel was the stock-ticker; and even there,
-the stock that it registered was water. It was all very amusing. Yet
-the fancy continually recurred of Miss Thomas, in this situation,
-though he, of all men, would have had no right to be displeased; for
-had she not definitely told him he had none? Still, it was hard to
-divest himself of a certain sense of property in her; he had mentally
-appropriated her for so long.
-
-He was plashing carelessly with his oars, and watching the sheen of
-moonlight on the outline of his companion's fair face, suffering
-himself for a moment to wonder how the same light would have fallen in
-Winifred's blue eyes, when Miss Gibbs again spoke of her.
-
-"I had a letter from your friend Miss Thomas, to-day," said she. The
-deuce she had! thought Vane; so she corresponds with Miss Gibbs, does
-she? Vane was disgusted with himself for thinking so much about the
-girl, and here he was caught thinking of her again.
-
-He pulled a few nervous strokes. How could he see the letter without
-exciting Miss Gibbs' curiosity? He managed it, finally, and read the
-letter. He was secretly relieved to find that the note was quite formal
-and was simply to tell Miss Gibbs that she need not forward a piece of
-embroidery which had been left behind. More surprising was the news
-that Miss Thomas was coming back. Vane made himself doubly attentive
-to Miss Gibbs; and as each man walked back with his lady, and said to
-her a long good night on the hotel piazza, implying all the sorrow of
-a Romeo in parting from a Juliet, Vane was secretly wondering what the
-deuce he was to do. "What the deuce!" was again the phrase he mentally
-used. He did not wish to see the girl again--that was certain enough;
-but it was decidedly undignified to run away. There was really a sort
-of fatality in their meeting.
-
-But the best way to treat a fatality is to make nothing of it. Thus
-treated, it is seldom fatal. Then he was rather curious to see how Miss
-Thomas would behave among these Dibbles and these Westerhouses. After
-all, she too was an American; a little more sophisticated, a little
-better endowed by nature; but she, too, made a toy of love, and actors
-in private theatricals of her more "exciting" friends. "Exciting" was
-a word that Vane had heard Miss Westerhouse apply to Mr. Dibble. Vane
-had caught a little of the Parisian's contempt for flirting with young
-girls. In a flirtation with married women, he thought, there were at
-least possibilities; and the flirtations were not so utterly silly.
-But marriage was far too serious an affair to be made fun of. At this
-period Vane affected to himself an extreme cynicism. Intercourse with
-Cinerea girls had corrupted him. They had given him their own levity.
-At another time, he would have deplored the vulgarization of a lofty
-sentiment; but since the past June he had been in a flippant mood
-himself. The American cue was to make game of everything in fun, and
-to make a hazard of life in earnest. He felt that he was becoming
-Americanized.
-
-Feminine companionship was certainly corrupting to earnestness, if
-not to morals. By the end of this week he felt cloyed with too much
-trifle. He sighed for a man and a cigar, for a seat in a club, for a
-glass of brandy, for anything else masculine, for a little of man's
-plain language and strong thinking. Yet these girls were no fools: they
-read Prosper Mérimée's Letters, for example. They were emancipated
-enough. But they also read Lucile. He understood why women were not
-let into ancient religions, Freemasonry and the Egyptian mysteries.
-They belittled the imagination. _Per contra_, they were essential to
-the Eleusinian. Their only truly great rôle was the Mœnad. And yet, he
-thought, these sentiments of his would have shocked these girls.
-
-Vane's thoughts came and went nervously. He was driving in a buggy
-alone, or, at least, only Miss Morse was with him. He was ashamed of
-himself; he was ashamed of his thinking; he was ashamed, thinking as
-he did, of his inconsistency in driving with Miss Morse in a buggy.
-_Postiche, postiche_, it was all _postiche_, or was it frankness? Was
-it the troubled dream, the low beginning of the new conditions? Was
-his disapproval a bit of feudal prejudice? Vane was troubled, excited,
-disgusted, confused. Miss Morse noticed all this, but thought he was in
-love with her.
-
-The only green spots in the man's memory were Rennes, and Monserrat,
-and Carcassonne; yes, and the littered desk in the down-town office in
-New York--the scene of his only labors and his one success. And that
-success was no longer necessary; it no longer profited any one but
-himself. Vane had never formulated his position with such precision
-before. The last person of his own family was dead; he had claims upon
-no one, no one had any claim upon him; he had no further ambitions upon
-Mammon. Given this problem, what solution could the world offer--the
-New York world, that is? Somebody says life is made up of labor,
-art, love, and worship. New York had given him labor, which he had
-performed. And of the others? Had it given him love, even? Was he a
-barbarian, better fitted for a struggle with crude nature than New
-York, not up to the refinements of modern civilization? Should he
-leave these places? Now, that day Miss Thomas was to come, and he must
-decide. He thirsted for happiness; how was he best to find it? These
-thoughts, perhaps, seemed selfish, cold-blooded, practical, but there
-was a sadness in them for Vane.
-
-So thinking, as he drove his buggy along the road, they passed Miss
-Thomas, walking gracefully, and the rich, slow color burned through
-her face and fell away at her temples as she bowed. Vane drove on the
-faster, flicking his horse with the whip, and considered what he would
-do now that she had returned.
-
-He would treat her like Miss Westerhouse and Miss Gibbs of
-Philadelphia. He would not have his own movements disturbed by her
-coming and going. He would stay his intended fortnight out and then go.
-
-
-
-
-XXIII.
-
-
-THERE was a mountain party that afternoon, organized by Mr. Dibble.
-Vane supposed that Miss Thomas would be of the number, and himself
-stayed away, not caring to meet her. But when he came back, after a
-long walk, she was sitting on the piazza with Mrs. Haviland. Vane
-passed by, raising his hat. She looked at him almost wistfully, not
-blushing this time, but very pale. When he came down from his room,
-before tea, he went up and spoke to her.
-
-"You have not gone to the picnic, Miss Thomas!"
-
-She looked up for a moment at him earnestly; then, dropping her eyes,
-spoke gravely and rather coldly.
-
-"I do not go on mountain parties, Mr. Vane."
-
-"At Cinerea Lake?"
-
-"At Cinerea Lake or elsewhere."
-
-"Really, I had flattered myself that I had been enjoying your own
-diversions."
-
-Miss Thomas made no answer whatever to this. Then, after some
-minutes--"Why did you not answer my letter?"
-
-"I did not know it required an answer."
-
-"I value your friendship very highly. It made me very unhappy."
-
-"Apparently you were successful in concealing your unhappiness from
-your friend Miss Gibbs. I did not know it was my friendship you cared
-for."
-
-"I am in the habit of concealing most things from Miss Gibbs. Have I
-ever given you reason to suppose I cared for anything _else_ than your
-friendship?"
-
-"You have lost little of your old skill," said Vane, grimly. "I cannot
-conceive, clever as you still are, that you should have been, for a
-year, so slow of comprehension. You would rather I should think you a
-flirt than maladroit."
-
-"You think me so?" Miss Thomas spoke as if she were going to cry. Vane
-looked at her.
-
-"I beg your pardon," said he, simply, and walked away. Miss Thomas went
-on with her sewing, bending her head over the work. Truly, thought
-Vane, it was not a very manly thing in him taunting her that he had
-failed to make her love him. But had he honestly tried? he questioned
-himself, as he walked up and down the piazza that evening. Had he not
-rather put the thing on a basis of flirtation from the beginning?
-
-Bah! he was going back to his old innocence. He had definitely given
-her to understand that he had loved her, and she had forced him to
-the utmost boundary of the explicit, and in his foolish magnanimity
-had made a fool of him. He had failed to make her love him; no one
-could make her love until she chose, for worldly reasons of her own,
-to try. He stopped his walk when next he passed by the place where she
-was sitting. "You do not seem to have your old attention," he said,
-brutally. He had a way of saying petty things when with her, and was
-conscious of it.
-
-"Why do you think I care for attention?" said she, simply.
-
-"You cared for mine----"
-
-"You admit it?"
-
-----"Like that of any masculine unit."
-
-"I used to respect you, Mr. Vane. Pray do not console me for the loss
-of your friendship by showing me how worthless it is."
-
-"You seem to have made that friendship of mine for you a matter of
-common knowledge among the people in this place."
-
-"I have never spoken of you to any one since you left, last June."
-
-There was a ring of truth in her words, but Vane thought of Miss Gibbs
-and her trivial talk. He sat down in the chair in front of her.
-
-There was nothing said between them for a long time.
-
-"You told me then that you had forgiven me. I thought it was so
-noble in you! for I had acted very wrongly." Miss Thomas was
-rocking nervously in her chair; she had a handkerchief in her hand;
-occasionally in the dark, she touched it to her eyes. Vane took hold of
-the end of the handkerchief, as it drooped from her hand. "I told you
-then that I would forgive you--and it was true," he said.
-
-"Then give me your friendship back. I am so lonely--without it," she
-added in low tones. Vane still held the handkerchief, and moved it
-slowly with the rocking, alternately drawing it forward and letting it
-back; a subtle feminine influence seemed to be in the soft cambric, and
-thrilled warm in his hand.
-
-Vane felt very kindly toward her as he went to sleep that night. After
-all, she was true, or meant to be, at least. It was not her fault, but
-his, that she had not cared to be his wife. And it seemed to him that
-he cared more for his opinion of her than for hers of him. He valued
-his faith in her more than his hope of winning her.
-
-Again, he doubted if he was in love with her; he doubted if he ever had
-been; but he still felt for her a sort of tender pity. Poor, lonely,
-little maiden; with all her beauty she was but a child as yet; and he
-had expected from her the knowledge and discretion of a woman of the
-world. Yes, surely, she was different from the other girls in this
-place. He was glad that his momentary love had calmed and sweetened
-into friendship.
-
-Vane himself asked her to walk with him the next evening, and they went
-at sunset through the grave mountain gorges. They were both very quiet;
-the man had almost nothing to say. They knew one another too well for
-ordinary conversation.
-
-"Why are you so silent?" said she. "You never used to be so."
-
-"Am I silent? I do not know why. I suppose I make up for having nothing
-to say when I am with you by thinking of you so much when I am away.
-There is so much to be thought, and so little to be said."
-
-"I am glad that you still think of me."
-
-Vane looked at her dense black hair, and the soft shine of moisture in
-her upturned eyes. "The thoughts that I cannot say are so much stronger
-than the things I can, that they overpower the others, and I can say
-nothing," he said.
-
-"Do you know, I often have imaginary conversations with you?"
-
-"Tell me some of them."
-
-"I cannot. I should say too much if I said anything."
-
-"Remember our compact, to be only friends," said Vane, gravely. "Do not
-speak as if you were more than a friend, or I shall think you less."
-
-"I do remember our compact. That is why I do not say them."
-
-The words sounded strangely, but Vane knew she was sincere when
-she uttered them. When she pressed his hand that night at parting,
-she still managed to let Vane know that he was to put no false
-interpretation on her friendliness. She was a woman, and she did not
-know herself, he thought; but she was not a girl, and she knew him.
-
-A day or two after this they were drifting under the moonlight on the
-lake. Her beauty had never seemed so marvellous to Vane as on that
-evening; the soft darkness of her hair, and shadowed light of her blue
-eyes, like the light of the night sky with the moon at the zenith.
-Her head was drooping slightly, and one round white arm, bared to the
-elbow, was trailing with a tender ripple in the water.
-
-"Are you never going to marry, friend of mine?" said Vane, dropping his
-oars to look at her.
-
-"Yes," said she, "I shall marry when one man asks me."
-
-"Who is he?"
-
-"I have never met him," she muttered, dreamily. "I have never met but
-one man like him."
-
-Vane took his oar again. "She meant me to think she meant me," he
-thought, and rowed vigorously. She seemed unconscious of the change
-of motion, and her hand, still trailing in the water, wet her white
-sleeve. Vane stopped rowing and seated himself beside her. "You are
-wetting your arm," said he, lifting her hand from the water. She shall
-love me, he thought to himself, as he looked at her. A moment later he
-had taken her hand in his, and pushing the sleeve back from the arm
-kissed it passionately. The woman made no sign for a moment or two;
-then, as the man still held her hand, she came to herself with a little
-shudder. "O don't, Mr. Vane, pray don't--oh, I ought not to have let
-you do it--oh, pray go back----." Vane left her hand and looked at her
-steadfastly. "Oh, I ought not to have spoken so," she went on, with a
-little moan, "but I pitied you so----. O Mr. Vane, I was so sorry for
-you, that I forgot; and you were looking at me, and you seemed to care
-so much----"
-
-"You told me of imaginary conversations you sometimes had with me,"
-said Vane. "Cannot you tell me what they were?"
-
-"Oh, I ought not to tell you," said she, breathlessly. "Can we not go
-home? Will you not row me back?"
-
-Vane slowly resumed his seat. "We each now owe the other forgiveness,"
-said he. "If you would try to love me, I think I would wait." The
-girl in front of him shuddered again, and bent her head away, till he
-saw where her hair was pencilled into the ivory neck; then she spoke,
-slowly and simply. "I have sometimes fancied that I could learn to care
-for you, Mr. Vane--not now, not now--after a great many years, perhaps."
-
-Vane was silent for some minutes. Then, as they neared the shore, he
-spoke in a clear undertone. "Will you promise to tell me, if you ever
-care for any one else--if I wait, Miss Thomas?"
-
-She bowed her head still lower, and Vane took her hand again and held
-it for a moment. He left in it the old lace handkerchief, still burned
-at the edges. "When you send it back to me, I shall know what it
-means," he said, and kissed it. "But while you still keep it, I shall
-hope."
-
-"Oh, I am wrong in saying this," she sighed. "I may never care for you.
-And yet in certain ways I care for you so much. It seems sometimes to
-me that I have no heart. I don't think I am worthy of you." She took
-the handkerchief and put it in her pocket.
-
-
-
-
-XXIV.
-
-
-THEY walked back together. Vane felt a year removed from the happenings
-of the last week, from Miss Morse, from all the others. It seemed as
-if the painted hotel were to vanish, like a stage-setting, and he were
-back in Carcassonne or Monserrat, back with her. All the genuine life
-that he had missed so long was his: the earnestness, the simplicity of
-olden times. Now no longer he asked himself what there was in America
-for him to do.
-
-In all this there was nothing sentimental; it was natural, real,
-radical. That he ever could have doubted that he was in love!
-
-What he felt for Winifred was passion, not sentiment, and he gloried
-in it; it was because she was a woman, after all, and he a man, and he
-knew now that he should win her.
-
-There was a certain splendid excitement about Vane's life that autumn.
-It was all so real to him now. The solution had come of itself. He
-was not yet her lover, formally accepted, but he felt that he was her
-lover in fact and truth. He was continually with her; following her
-to Newport when she went there for a month, late in October. She not
-only suffered him to be with her; she suffered him (as a woman may,
-impalpably) to love her; even, now and then, to show his love for her,
-as when he took her hand, or walked with her in autumn evenings by the
-sea. Now and then she would repulse him, telling him that he must not
-be confident of her; that it was only to be after many years; but her
-repulses grew fainter and less frequent. It did not, even then, seem to
-Vane as if he were teaching her to love; she was too sympathetic; she
-felt too quickly and too closely every impulse of his own; his passion
-was too readily reflected in the flush or paleness of her face. Rather
-was she herself the mistress, Vane the scholar. Nothing he said or
-sighed seemed to take her by surprise, to be unappreciated by her. He
-augured well from this.
-
-When a woman admits that she may come to like a man in time, she means
-that she already loves him, but is not quite ready for marriage. It
-was a more dangerous footing, their intimacy on these terms, than if
-their troth had been fairly plighted. The man sought persistently to
-win new concessions, to force further confessions; the woman, having
-made the one admission, could but half resist. It brought about a new
-declaration of his passion every day; pale, she listened to the torrent
-of his words, now faintly chiding, now looking vacantly out to sea. The
-worn voices of the ocean gave might and earnestness to his pleading,
-and filled, with its own grave majesty, his broken pauses. Her hand
-would grow cold as it lay between his own, and she sat silent; until,
-with a start of self-reproach, she would regain her knowledge of the
-present and make him lead her back among the streets and houses.
-
-Vane went occasionally, for a few days, to the city, to look after
-the affairs of his bank. The closing of his contract with Welsh, who
-finally paid to the firm nearly a million, and the reinvestment of this
-money, took much time. Vane had never been a better man of business
-than when he decided on these matters, thinking, with a thrill in his
-strong body, of the meeting, next day, and the long afternoon to be
-passed on the shore with the woman that he loved. Some days Vane would
-not go near her; he was still careful not to incur comment; he could
-control himself. But hardly any one was left in Newport now, and their
-walks far out upon the cliffs had generally escaped the notice of the
-world.
-
-
-
-
-XXV.
-
-
-SHE came back to the city in November, but in the last of the month
-again Vane persuaded her to go to Newport and spend a week when he
-could be there all the time. She had an old aunt there at whose house
-she visited; Vane had his permanent lodgings; and this was before the
-time when many people stayed there through the winter. Vane had urged
-her to let him meet her at the southern extremity of the island, where
-the long ledges of rock run out to the reef; but sometimes she would
-bid him walk thither with her, and would even seem to like to have
-the notice of the town. They had given up their reading by this time,
-and their small talk had long since ceased. Early in the autumn they
-had begun with the Vita Nuova; but even Dante's words had seemed weak
-to him, and after a few days the books had been thrown aside. She had
-not urged him to go on with them. Every day, rain or storm, this late
-week in autumn, they would skirt the cliffs, by the gardens with a few
-geraniums or pansies still drooping in the trim parterres, and go far
-out along the southern coves and beaches, where the full pulse of the
-Atlantic rolled in from the Indies. Vane had tried every day to win
-the final word; but all his passion had not done more than force her
-to seek refuge in silence. This last day she had opened her lips once
-or twice to speak, after a long pause, and then pressed them again
-together. Vane always walked a yard or two from her side, and looked
-at her fairly when he spoke. She would not sit down with him that day;
-so they went on, mile after mile, along a still, gray sea. The sky was
-cloudy, the waters had an oily look; and the waves were convex and
-smooth until they broke, creaming about the sharp rocks. Vane made
-another trial, just before they left the ocean to turn inland. She
-seemed to feel that she ought to speak, then, but yet could only look
-at him with her large blue eyes, the pupils slightly dilated. At last,
-just as she was leaving him, "Come to see me, in a month, in New York,"
-she said.
-
-Vane went back that night and kept himself very busy. He heard little
-from Miss Thomas during the time except that she had not returned from
-Newport. She would never write to him since the June last past, though
-he had often begged her to do so. On the afternoon before Christmas
-Eve, at five o'clock, he called at her house. The room was just as
-he remembered it the year before--if anything, a little more shabby.
-She was standing alone as if she expected him. She was dressed in a
-gown that he remembered, and looked younger and more like her old self
-than she had seemed at Newport. She was smiling as he entered, but
-though the smile did not enter her eyes, they were not deep. She held
-something in her hand, which, as Vane approached, she extended to him.
-"I want to give you back your handkerchief," she said. "I have felt
-that I ought to for a long time. I wanted to do so at Newport, but I
-could not bring myself to do it then."
-
-Vane stopped in his walk to look at her. "You mean that you love some
-one else?"
-
-Miss Thomas bent her head a hair's breadth.
-
-"Yes," said she, simply.
-
-"Who is it?"
-
-"Mr. Ten Eyck."
-
-"Are you engaged to him?"
-
-"No."
-
-"Have you told him?"
-
-"No."
-
-"When are you going to tell him?"
-
-"In a day or two."
-
-Vane gave a heavy sigh. Miss Thomas sank in a chair, looking at the
-fire, the handkerchief still in her hand.
-
-"I thank you for telling me first," said Vane. He turned to go.
-
-"You have forgotten your handkerchief," said she. Vane went back to get
-it, avoiding the touch of her hand. Then he turned again, and the outer
-door closed behind him, Miss Thomas still looking at the fire. It was a
-rainy night and there had been snow previously. As Vane crossed Fifth
-Avenue he threw the handkerchief into a pool of mire.
-
-He went to his lodgings to shave and dress for dinner. His hand
-trembled, and it seemed to him that he was very angry. He took dinner
-at his club, and smoked a cigar afterward with a friend, and drank a
-bottle of Burgundy.
-
-"What has become of Ten Eyck this last month?" asked Vane, carelessly,
-in the course of the evening.
-
-"He's been at Newport lately," said the other. "He's just got back."
-
-Vane went to bed rather early and slept heavily. It was unusual for
-him to take so much wine. But he did not dream of Miss Thomas. In the
-morning he felt that he had got over it, and he walked down-town to
-his office. It was a clear winter's day, sharp and bright. They were
-closing up the banking accounts for the year, and he worked hard all
-the morning. He might now call himself very rich. He was an infinitely
-better match than Ten Eyck. She must have loved him all along--from
-the very beginning, thought he. He was very indignant with her. But
-in the afternoon, even this feeling seemed to grow less strong. She
-was a woman, after all. He could not blame her. He had been angry last
-night, but now he felt that he could understand her. He almost liked
-her the better for it. She had been true to herself and her first
-love. He might have wished the same thing himself. Vane almost felt a
-pride in his discovery of her nature. He had called her a woman from
-the beginning. It was the fashion to decry American girls. She was
-different from a girl. She was a true woman--a woman like Cleopatra or
-like Helen. Had he first won her, she would have been true to him. He
-argued savagely with himself, defending her.
-
-He worked rapidly, and by noon the accounts were done. It was Christmas
-Eve. Toward evening the sky became gray, with flakes of snow in the
-air. Vane walked up to Central Park, and returned to dress for dinner.
-Where was he to dine? The club was the best place to meet people. His
-lodgings were dark, and he had some difficulty in finding a match; then
-he dropped one of his shirt studs on the floor and had to grope for it.
-Another one broke, and he threw open the drawer of his shaving-stand,
-impatiently, to find one to replace it. Lying in the drawer was an old
-revolver he had brought back from Minnesota two years before. He took
-it out, placed the muzzle at his chest, and drew the trigger. As he
-fell on the floor, he turned once over upon his side, holding up his
-hands before his eyes.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-So John ended his story. Of course he told it much less elaborately,
-that evening in the club, than I have written it here. I suppose I
-have told it more as if I were a novelist, trying to write a story.
-John gave the facts briefly; but he described Vane's character pretty
-carefully, even to his thoughts, as he had known the man so intimately.
-Most of these descriptions I have tried to reproduce. And he ended
-the story as I have ended it, even to the very words. It was a story
-six years old when he told it to us; the man was forgotten, and the
-girl was married. His suicide was at first ascribed to financial
-difficulties, and the excitement soon subsided when his banking
-accounts were shown to be correct.
-
-I do not remember that there was very much said when John got through.
-It was very late at night; most of the men were sleepy and we all had
-to be down-town early in the morning. There was, indeed, a silence for
-some time.
-
-Finally the Major drew a long breath. "Well," said he, "my opinion
-remains the same."
-
-"And mine." "And mine," chimed in voices.
-
-"The man was a fool," said Schuyler, simply.
-
-"It was cowardly to shoot himself," said Daisy Blake.
-
-"And to shoot himself for a girl!" cried Schuyler. "Just think what a
-fellow may do with fifty thousand a year!"
-
-"She was a woman," said John.
-
-"Was she a woman? that is just the question," said the Major.
-
-"The question," said another man, who had not yet spoken, "is whether
-he really loved Baby Thomas--or the English girl, after all." This was
-a new view of the case; and a moment's silence followed.
-
-"No man, to see Mrs. Malgam now, would think a fellow had shot himself
-for her," said another.
-
-"How does she come to be Mrs. Malgam?"
-
-"Oh, Malgam is her second husband," said Blake. "She has grown
-tremendously fat."
-
-"Well, good-night," said the Major, rising.
-
-"Speaking of fifty thousand a year, how much did Vane really leave?"
-said Schuyler to John.
-
-"A million and a half, I believe."
-
-"Whew!" said Schuyler; "I had no idea of that."
-
-"The granger roads dropped half a point, when his death was known,"
-said the Major, putting on his coat.
-
-                               THE END.
-
-
-
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-"Haviand", on page 67, has been changed to "Haviland", the correct name
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